Thor'sLinks: Hall-acious hangovers

Hall of Fame Fun. By now you all know that Tim Raines (finally!), Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez were voted into the HoF. Vlad fell a tad short. Everybody is saying that this means Vlad is a shoe-in for next year, but I dunno. Vlad came in 5th already, behind those three and Trevor Hoffman. Next year Chipper Jones and Jim Thome join the ballot and are sure to be favored first-ballot inductees. That would park Vlad 4th again, at best. And if the voters tend to vote in only 2 or 3 per year, Vlad is outside and maybe starting to lose some luster...........

But here is a thought (no link). With Tim Raines being voted in, that makes three Montreal caps in the HoF (Gary Carter and Andre Dawson being the others). And Raines will now be extremely recent. This has the potential of swinging the Hall one or ticks more in favor of suggesting a Halo for Vlad if he ever gets the nod............

And should Vlad ever do get in, we should launch a campaign to volunteer some HH-created prose that might be used (even if partially) on his plaque..........

TIL. It's always great to be expanding brain cells. Yesterday was just such a day. In reading about how this voting results speaks to an evolution in the overall opinion of the HoF voting community, I learned that Tim Raines - #1 vote getter - was a admitted drug user. " Tim Raines didn’t need to be accused of being a drug user — he admitted to as much in the Pittsburgh drug trials in the 1980s. Raines’ nickname, 'Rock,' had a clear reference point: Raines said that he used to carry a gram of cocaine on him during games — he didn’t want to leave the drug in his locker — and he slid headfirst as to not break the vial in his back pocket. " Jeez. All this angst over Bonds and Clemens - mountains of ink and photons - exist in direct contrast to all of the focus on how Raines has been long overlooked because of his numbers............All of this I did not know..............

Using twitter to crowd-source a HoF ballot turns out to be a very bad idea. Since crowd-sourcing via Deadspin a couple of years ago created a very credible ballot, the problem doesn't appear to be with crowd-sourcing as a process. The problem seems to be related to the crowd that any sourcing tool would reach. And twitter users appear to be pretty bad. Right down there with FB and Insta users, I would guess..........

Prior to the results being announced Jon Heyman had some misgivings about his peers when it came to Vlad's nomination. After the results were announced Jon Heyman took his peers to task concerning how they left Vlad behind at the bus stop..............Speaking of Vlad. if my math is right after studying this results data, 442 ballots were cast and 332 votes were needed in order to reach/exceed the necessary 75% mark. Vlad pulled 317. He was 15 votes short. I haven't seen every one of the 442 ballots, but the voters who failed to vote for Vlad would fall into one of three categories: ( A ) protest asshats who used to process to make a personal statement and draw attention to themselves and submitted blank ballots altogether; ( B ) voters who chose not to submit 10 names; and ( C ) voters who submitted the max of 10 names and didn't feel that Vlad should be among them. We can probably blame the entirety of Vlad's missing out on voters in categories (A ) and ( B)...........Speaking of class ( B ) voters, those who submitted ballots with less than 10 names AND left off Vlad, I count at least 38 of those people. THIRTY EIGHT. That includes folk from Dallas and NorCal and Boston. Just sayin'.............

One interesting observation, albeit with small sample sizes, would be how new voters were trending versus established voters. Newbie voters didn't care as much for Vlad's candidacy as did established voters. So I wonder, and this is entirely conjecture of my own fabrication, could established voters recall more of Vlad from his Montreal years, while newbie voters have spent less of their baseball time following the Angels and West Coast baseball?..........

Finally, yes, Jorge Posada has drifted back off the radars of our lives..........Then, Curt Shilling is evaporating before our very eyes..........And, the more you have public ballots, the less BBWAA voters will be secretly shaming Bonds and Clemens..........

The Duffle Bag

Some levels of commitment are greater than others. Take, for example, this Mexican Winter League catcher...........Yeah, here is one batting category that won't have much to do with Trout: what happens on 0-0 pitches..........Hulu is going to start beta testing their live streaming service, and you could be a part of it..........By the way, this Hall of Fame thing is not trivial. It's important. Just look.............

______________________________

Halo-Oppo-ly

Alright! The properties have all been put out there. This week, lets give you the tokens. I will give you 10 of them, total.

(Little did I know when I started out that Hasbro was holding a public contest to define the official game tokens. Results to announced in March.)

______________________________