He shouldn’t have been on this year’s ballot (I mistakenly interpreted your earlier post as saying he should never have been on any ballots) because he asked not to be. I’m not entirely against this argument in general. But if I were the one making the decision to place him on the ballot, I’d be concerned (because Schilling is a shitbag) that he’d later weaponize that choice against me - I can imagine Schilling complaining about the HoF 5 years from now saying, “If that WOKE bastard spidercrab hadn’t arbitrarily removed me from the ballot in my final year, I would have been a shoe-in.”
He shouldn’t have been on this year’s ballot (or several earlier ballots) because, again, he’s a shitbag. I don’t love the idea of off-field behavior (particularly, non-criminal behavior**) being a major factor in HoF decisions. And I again think he’d weaponize the leave-off-the-ballot decision. I think the “leave him on the ballot, let him fail the vote” outcome is perfectly fine. (The only real problem that I have with it is that him being on the ballot soaks up other votes because of the 10 votes per ballot cap.)
**Going off memory that none of his shitbaggery has been criminal, with the video game failure/bankruptcy/bailout/scheme? being the closest to criminal.
Other than the Fernando Tatis two grand slams in an inning, the craziest one to me is that 31 players have hit a homer on the first pitch they saw in the big leagues.
This is roughly a 0.378 OBP, right? That doesn’t seem super crazy, given the average OBP is low to mid 0.300s. (Yes, I appreciate that the pitchers who got through the first 26 batters are likely better than average.)
Maybe I’m still sleepy, but where does the 11 out of 13 come from? What if I walk 3 batters, give up a home run, walk another 3 batters, give up another home run, and then strike out 3 in a row?
My favorite examples from that thread, assuming they’re all true (one definitely is not):
I meant two grand slams in the same inning where both batter and pitcher are the same (the way it was with Tatis and Park). I see how that wasn’t clear on my part.
Oh shit - I didn’t realize it was 2 grand slams in the same inning by the same batter. But now that I think about it, 2 grand slams in the same inning by different batters has to have been more common than just once in history.
This is a half-baked thought that I think, if clarified, would be interesting:
Take the top 10 or 20 teams all time, however you define them. Then, make the following hypothetical rule change: At the beginning of each game, the manager will submit a lineup card. Each at bat, the highest player on that lineup card who is not on base will bat. So, for example, Barry Bonds could hit a home run and immediately bat again. But if Barry Bonds got a double, the next person would bat.
If you imagined simulating every season in history under this alternative set of rules, who’s the best team?
That’s how it reads because I didn’t want to make it too nebulous and hard to simulate (not that I could even do that). But I think my actual proposal would be that the manager could select any batter that is currently not on base.
I’m not sure this should actually lead to more IBB, even for someone like Bonds. While you then wouldn’t have to face him over and over, instead you’d have to face the teams second best hitter repeatedly (and occasionally the third and then rarely the fourth). The main value from IBB is skipping the best hitter for 8 batters (many of which are very crappy), which isn’t the case here.
For instance - look at the 2004 Giants - instead of Bonds and his .500/.800 - you’d instead get JT Snow repeatedly at .429/.529 (I’m assuming for this exercise we’re taking their yearly average and saying they would still hit that well), with a man on first. Not sure how to crunch the numbers on expected value for something like this, but don’t think it’s clear cut you’d want to give up free runners only to still face a very good hitter.
Right, so I was just trying to imagine which teams get the benefit from having virtually all of their offensive power concentrated among the top 2-3 hitters, and teams with fairly uniform offensive power throughout their lineup would be worse off.
