ESPN's Jayson Stark has remarked that there now seems to be a backlog of qualified players. Mr. Stark wanted to select 12 players, but had to leave two out because the ballot allows a maximum of 10. Has it gotten tougher to make the Hall of Fame?...
>>>ESPN's Jayson Stark has remarked that there now seems to be a backlog of qualified players. Mr. Stark wanted to select 12 players, but had to leave two out because the ballot allows a maximum of 10. Has it gotten tougher to make the Hall of Fame?
Actually, the Baseball Writers Association of America has always had a stingy door policy. Of the 235 players in the Hall of Fame, only 111 were elected by the writers -- and only 44 of those during their first year of eligibility.
Over the past 10 elections, the writers have permitted an average of 1.6 players annually into the Hall of Fame. This is, in fact, a highly typical figure: since 1967, when the writers began to vote on induction every year rather than every other one, the average is 1.5. So at first glance, the answer seems to be that the current standards are pretty much par for the course.
read more of this in the Political blog of Nate Silver in the New York Times.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/is-the-hall-of-fame-too-small/
