The Futility Infielder

With results of the 2004 Baseball Writers of America voting to be announced on Tuesday, the Hall of Fame is on everybody's lips. Writers everywhere -- those with ballots real and imagined -- have been posting their votes online. Alex Ciepley has an accurate take on the situation -- and some good picks -- at his Ball Talk blog.

In the past, I've done lengthy rundowns of the ballot in preparation for the results, and you can rest assured that I'm doing the same this year, but with a new wrinkle. I don't want to jinx anything, so I won't say much more than that my picks will be up early in the coming week... somewhere.

The hot-button candidate in the online baseball community is Bert Blyleven, who won 287 games in the big leagues and is #5 on the all-time strikeout list. Blyeleven hasn't gotten much love from Hall of Fame voters in his first six years on the ballot, failing to top 30 percent when 75 percent is the required number to achieve enshrinement. But the consensus among many who have studied the issue beyond simple wins and losses is that he belongs in the Hall. Rich Lederer has an excellent summary of the statistical case to be made for Blyleven, and he's even taken that a step further by emailing two Hall of Fame voters, Bill Conlin and Jeff Peek. The responses he got were very enlightening. Conlin, a Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter who's known nationally for his girth and his belligerence more than his intellect, dismissed Rich's work as "cybergeek stuff," while Peek, who writes for the Traverse City [Michigan] Record-Eagle, admitted that in his first-ever Hall ballot, he blew it on Blyleven.

I've remarked among friends a number of times that the Hall of Fame is an area where statheads might make a meaningful difference in convincing voters to re-examine their previously held assumptions about certain players. Rich's work is proof that occasionally, somebody might listen. From another precinct, Aaron Gleeman points to a recent article by Sporting News writer Ken Rosenthal, in which he refers to park-adjusted figures on Baseball-Reference as helping to sway him in Blyleven's favor.

Early returns at Baseball Primer show that Blyleven hasn't gained much support, but he'll still have eight more years on the ballot after this one, and there's hope that the BBWAA voters might be swayed sooner or later. After all, not all of those ballot-hogs can live forever.