Will new Hall committee see former stars in new light?
SAN DIEGO – Almost every January for the past several years, Alan Trammell would get the same sort of phone calls from reporters.
How do you feel about your chances at getting into the baseball Hall of Fame? Will it ever happen?
The former Detroit Tigers shortstop still never got enough votes to believe a call from the Hall would ring him up next. But now comes something different: a new round of consideration under a newly configured veterans’ committee process.
And that means new hope for Trammell and others, including his former Tigers teammate Jack Morris.
Or does it? No living former player has been elected through this secondchance system since 2001.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Trammell, 59, told USA TODAY Sports. “I’m just going to go in with an open mind, and we’ll see what happens. But again, I just kind of have that old thought: ‘ Is it going to happen dramatically this year just because I’m in a new group?’ I don’t know. I really don’t.”
After 20 seasons with the Tigers, Trammell finished his playing career in 1996 and still has good Hall of Fame credentials – 2,365 hits, a World Series MVP award in 1984 and a ranking as the 11th- best shortstop in history, according to a statistical system developed by sabermetrician Jay Jaffe. Trammell’s numbers compare favorably with several current inductees, particularly former Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin.
Yet Trammell never got more than 40.9% of the vote during the 15 years he was allowed on the regular ballot – well short of the 75% he needed from eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. The question now is whether a different group of voters will consider him any worthier during his next judgment day, Dec. 10 at baseball’s winter meetings in Florida.
That’s when the new “Modern Era” veterans’ committee of 16 voters will consider electing 10 individuals who made their greatest contributions to the game from 1970- 87.
This committee is tasked with voting on modern- era players more frequently than the previous veterans’ committee – twice every five years instead of once every three. It will focus on more narrow modern eras, instead of the previously considered “expansion era” since 1973.
“The restructuring of time frames to be considered puts a much greater emphasis on modern eras while still allowing those who excelled before 1950, as well as Negro Leagues stars, the opportunity to have their careers reviewed, but with less frequency,” Hall of Fame spokesman Jon Shestakofsky said.
When the changes were announced last year, Hall of Fame chair Jane Forbes Clark noted there are twice as many players in the Hall who debuted before 1950 than those that debuted after 1950 – even though there are nearly double the eligible candidates since 1950.
The new modern veterans’ com- mittees essentially forces a more focused consideration of players from this era who were passed over by the writers. Besides Trammell, the modern- era list of 10 that will be voted on next month includes former players’ union boss Marvin Miller, former New York Yankees star Don Mattingly and Morris, the pitcher who fell off the regular ballot in 2014 after peaking at 61.5% of the writers’ vote.
It’s just not clear yet if the tweaks to this process will make a difference. Prior iterations of the veterans committee have been notoriously picky and last selected a living former player in 2001, when ex- Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski got the call after topping out with 42.3% of the vote during his last year on the writers’ ballot in 1992.
Last year, a similar 16- member “Today’s Game” committee considered those whose most significant contributions came since 1988. Five living, former players were on that ballot, including former sluggers Harold Baines, Will Clark and Mark McGwire. They all got fewer than five votes, well short of the 12 they needed. Former baseball commissioner Bud Selig and former Atlanta Braves GM John Schuerholz were elected by that committee instead.
“It’s believed that the frequency with which players in this specific, underrepresented period are considered will result in the elections of some of them over the next several years,” said Jaffe, author of The Coo
perstown Casebook, a book about who should be in the Hall. “By that token, I think the new format is worth a shot. However, there are so many candidates who should be considered in this new format and such polarity in how they’re viewed in terms of ‘ old school’ and ‘ new school’ stats and perspectives that it’s unclear anybody will garner a consensus.”
Jaffe says he believes Trammell should be in the Hall, based on his JAWS analytics system of Hall of Fame worthiness. “Trammell is arguably the most deserving of the nine players on the ballot,” he said.