2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot
On November 4, 2019, the National Baseball Hall of Fame released the 2020 ballot for the Modern Baseball Committee of the Veterans' Committee. The Modern Baseball Era spans 1970 - 1987 and meets twice every five years. The last time the Modern Baseball Era met was in December, 2017, at which time they elected Alan Trammell and Jack Morris to the Hall of Fame (for induction in the summer of 2018).
The 2020 Modern Era ballot includes 9 players, as well as long-time Players' Union leader Marvin Miller.
The first table of this article looks at the 9 players on the ballot as measured by Player won-lost records.
In a separate article, I looked at players already in the Hall of Fame and Hall of Merit and how their careers look measured by Player won-lost records. In that article, I identified Willie Stargell as perhaps the most typical Hall-of-Famer as measured by Player won-lost records. I have included Stargell in the table below to give some sense of how this year's candidates compare to existing Hall-of-Fame standards. Keep in mind that, in my estimation, Stargell represents an "average" Hall-of-Famer, not the minimum standard for the Hall of Fame.
| | 2018 Hall of Fame Ballot
Player Won-Lost Records, sorted by pWORL |
| Player |
Games |
pWins |
pLosses |
pWOPA |
pWORL |
eWins |
eLosses |
eWOPA |
eWORL |
| Lou Whitaker | 2,387 | 303.8 | 262.6 | 51.2 | 78.5 | 299.5 | 266.8 | 43.3 | 70.6 |
| Dwight Evans | 2,602 | 330.1 | 271.9 | 45.6 | 75.3 | 325.3 | 276.7 | 36.3 | 66.1 |
| Willie Stargell | 2,356 | 295.7 | 230.0 | 45.7 | 71.8 | 295.7 | 230.1 | 46.6 | 72.8 |
| Tommy John | 761 | 276.0 | 248.5 | 38.3 | 70.9 | 270.3 | 254.2 | 29.7 | 62.3 |
| Dave Parker | 2,465 | 315.6 | 273.4 | 24.1 | 53.9 | 309.6 | 279.3 | 11.4 | 41.2 |
| Ted Simmons | 2,456 | 248.5 | 231.7 | 18.4 | 42.7 | 249.2 | 231.0 | 20.5 | 44.8 |
| Dale Murphy | 2,180 | 283.7 | 253.3 | 16.1 | 41.7 | 289.4 | 247.6 | 28.1 | 53.7 |
| Thurman Munson | 1,423 | 154.5 | 133.1 | 26.0 | 40.4 | 151.0 | 136.6 | 19.2 | 33.6 |
| Steve Garvey | 2,330 | 260.6 | 226.0 | 12.1 | 35.6 | 256.9 | 229.8 | 4.5 | 28.0 |
| Don Mattingly | 1,785 | 198.0 | 180.2 | 4.0 | 22.4 | 198.0 | 180.2 | 5.1 | 23.5 |
Players in italics have been inducted into Baseball Think Factory's Hall of Merit.
Overall, this is a very strong ballot. In fact, I worry that it might be too strong. To be elected requires a yes vote from 75% of the members of the committee (12 of 16). But committee members are only allowed to vote "yes" for up to four candidates. The worst-case scenario, then, would be if, for example, every member of the committee saw seven worthy candidates - perhaps even, they agreed on the seven worthy candidates - but each voter essentially randomly and independently chose which four worthy candidates to vote for. In such a case, it could end up the result that no individual candidate received more than 10 or 11 votes so that nobody was elected.
If I Had a Vote
Actually, despite my concern that this ballot might be "too strong", looking carefully, I see four player candidates who, in my opinion, are clearly more worthy than the other five. Setting Marvin Miller aside (no disrespect intended - personally, I think that players and non-players should be on different ballots, voted upon by different electors), my top four choices would be (in alphabetical order) Dwight Evans, Tommy John, Ted Simmons, and Lou Whitaker.
That said, if I had a vote, I believe that would mean that I would meet in person with the other members of the committee to discuss the candidates before we voted. If one or more other candidates, who I felt were generally worthy of the honor, seemed to have stronger support from other committee members, I might make more strategic selections, in the hopes of electing as many worthy candidates as possible.
Individual Players
I will be adding an article about each of the 9 player candidates to my website over the next two weeks: one article per day. In some cases, these are updated versions of articles which I have previously written when these players previously appeared on Hall-of-Fame ballots. These articles will be linked below as I update them.
Individual Player Articles
Dwight Evans
Steve Garvey
Tommy John
Don Mattingly
Thurman Munson
Dale Murphy
Dave Parker
Ted Simmons
Lou Whitaker
All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.
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