Jim Leyland elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

Jim Leyland

Our congratulations go out to former White Sox third-base coach Jim Leyland, who was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday by the Contemporary Baseball Era Non-Players Committee.

The committee examines the Hall cases of managers, umpires and executives whose greatest contributions to the sport came after 1980.

Leyland appeared on 15 of 16 ballots. One needs 12 votes in order to be elected to the Hall. Former manager Lou Piniella (11 votes) and former executive Bill White (10 votes) fell just short of the threshold.

Also considered were former managers Cito Gaston and Davey Johnson, umpires Ed Montague and Joe West, and executive Hank Peters.

Leyland, of course, was the third-base coach for manager Tony La Russa when the Sox won the 1983 American League West Division championship. However, that is not the reason Leyland was elected to the Hall of Fame.

He went on to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates (1986-96), Florida Marlins (1997-98), Colorado Rockies (1999) and Detroit Tigers (2006-13) over a period of 22 seasons. His final career record stands at 1,769 wins and 1,728 losses.

Leyland guided Pittsburgh to three straight National League East Division championships between 1990 and 1992. The Pirates won 95 games or more in each of those seasons, but they could never break through and get to the World Series, losing in the NLCS three years in a row.

In 1997, Leyland moved to Florida and guided the Marlins to the World Series championship in his first season there. Florida made the NL playoffs as a 92-win wild card. They swept the San Francisco Giants in the NLDS, won a six-game NLCS from the Atlanta Braves, then defeated the Cleveland Indians with a memorable comeback in Game 7 of the World Series.

Marlins ownership broke the team apart in a series of cost-cutting moves the following offseason, and Leyland endured the worst year of his managerial career in 1998, going 54-108.

After another losing season with Colorado in 1999, Leyland was out of the game until he resurfaced with Detroit in 2006. He had the most sustained success of his career with the Tigers, guiding them to AL pennants in 2006 and 2012. Detroit won AL Central championships in each of Leyland's final three years as manager, from 2011-13.

In eight years with the Tigers, Leyland went 700-597, good for a .540 winning percentage. He retired after the 2013 season.

Leyland, 78, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 21 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Fred McGriff elected to National Baseball Hall of Fame

The 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee on Sunday elected former big league first baseman Fred McGriff to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Whenever I hear McGriff's name, the first thing I think of is the Tom Emanski defensive drills video, which, of course, has McGriff's "full endorsement":

 

The irony is, McGriff was not a particularly good defensive first baseman. He's been elected to the Hall of Fame because he could hit the damn ball.

In 19 seasons, he totaled 493 home runs and collected 2,493 hits. He finished in the top 10 of MVP balloting six times and was chosen to the All-Star team five times.

McGriff had 10 seasons of 30 or more home runs, and he hit 30-plus homers for five different franchises. He was a member of the 1995 World Series champion Atlanta Braves. He had 1,550 RBIs in his career, and finished with a .284/.377/.509 career slash line.

In order to be elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, a player needs 12 of 16 votes, or 75% of the ballots. McGriff was unanimously chosen.

Don Mattingly (8 votes), Curt Schilling (7 votes) and Dale Murphy (6 votes) were others who received consideration and fell short.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Albert Belle and Rafael Palmeiro were also on the ballot, but all received less than four votes.

Mark Buehrle gets enough votes to stay on the Hall of Fame ballot

Mark Buehrle

For the first time since 2013, nobody got elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The votes from the Baseball Writers Association of America were revealed Tuesday, and no player received the 75% necessary to earn induction.

That doesn't mean that nobody will go into the Hall this year -- the Class of 2020, which includes Derek Jeter, Larry Walker and Ted Simmons, will get its induction ceremony this summer after COVID-19 ruined everything last July.

In this 2021 ballot, pitcher Curt Schilling came the closest. He got 71.1% of the vote, followed by outfielder Barry Bonds (61.8%) and pitcher Roger Clemens (61.1%). Schilling, Bonds and Clemens were all in their ninth year on the ballot, which means they'll get one more kick at the can in 2022. If a player isn't inducted after 10 years, he falls off the ballot.

The biggest takeaway for White Sox fans? Well, good news for Mark Buehrle. He received 44 of a possible 401 votes to lead all first-time candidates. That's 11% of the vote, so it's nowhere near enough to secure induction into the Hall, but Buehrle was comfortably above the 5% threshold needed to remain on the ballot for a second year.

I'm not prepared to say Buehrle belongs in the Hall, but I'm pleased to see him receive a decent level of support. Getting 44 votes means some people outside of Chicago noticed his name on the ballot and voted for him.

At the very least, my hope for Buehrle is that the voters give his career a fair audit in the years to come. How do we judge a starting pitcher's worthiness for the Hall anyway? Most starting pitchers in the Hall have 300 wins; 3,000 strikeouts or both. Almost nobody does that anymore, so new standards need to be applied to starting pitchers.

For Buerhle, let's start with this: Between 2000 and 2015, nobody pitched more innings, and nobody won more games. Buehrle and CC Sabathia both had 214 wins during that period. And as we've noted in the past, Buehrle had iconic moments in his career: two no-hitters, including a perfect game; five All-Star appearances, including an All-Star Game start; and a World Series championship with the Sox in 2005.

It may or may not have been a Hall of Fame career, but it was a career that should not be dismissed easily. I'm happy Buehrle's name will be on the Hall ballot again in 2022.

With Mark Buehrle on the Hall of Fame ballot, here are a few more notes about his career

Mark Buehrle

Objectively speaking, Mark Buehrle is a longshot candidate to make the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He is a White Sox great, without a doubt, but I'm not entirely sure he'll get the 5% of votes needed to remain on the Hall ballot in this, his first year of eligibility.

But here a few notes that might cause voters to more strongly consider Buerhle's Hall case:

1. In the history of baseball, there have been four pitchers who have thrown two no-hitters and posted at least 15 double-digit-win seasons: Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Warren Spahn and ... Mark Buehrle.

2. In the history of baseball, there have been four pitchers who have thrown 200 or more innings in 14 consecutive seasons: Greg Maddux, Phil Niekro, Christy Mathewson and ... Mark Buehrle.

3. In the history of baseball, there have been three pitchers who have pitched a no-hitter, pitched a perfect game and won a World Series all with the same team: Cy Young, Sandy Koufax and ... Mark Buehrle.

What do Ryan, Johnson, Spahn, Maddux, Niekro, Mathewson, Young and Koufax all have in common? They are all in the Hall of Fame. In fact, the only pitcher mentioned in this blog entry who is not in the Hall of Fame is ... Mark Buehrle.

Mark Buehrle among first-timers on National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

Mark Buehrle

Will any former players get elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame this year? I'm not sure, because none of the 11 first-timers on the ballot jump off the page to me.

Of interest to White Sox fans, former Sox left-hander Mark Buehrle is among those first-timers. What case does he have? Not a great one. In fact, it would be a good accomplishment for Buehrle if he remains on the ballot for more than one year.

His longtime teammate, Paul Konerko, was eligible for the first time last year, and Konerko quickly fell off the ballot after receiving only 10 votes, or 2.5%. It wouldn't be shocking if Buehrle met a similar fate. (You have to get 5% of the vote to stay on the ballot.)

Here's the case for Buehrle: 16 seasons, 214 wins, five All-Star appearances, four Gold Gloves, one World Series ring, two no-hitters -- including one perfect game -- a career ERA of 3.81, a career ERA+ of 117, and 14 consecutive seasons of 200 or more innings pitched and 10 or more victories.

Buehrle came four outs short of making it 15 consecutive seasons of 200 or more innings and 10 or more victories. In his final season, 2015 with the Toronto Blue Jays, he went 15-8 with a 3.81 ERA -- a career average season for him -- except for the innings total of 198.2.

The era of the 200-inning starting pitcher is pretty much over, and I think Buehrle's consistency and longevity will be appreciated more as time goes along. We won't see a lot of pitchers like him in the future. However, 2005 was the only season in which he received Cy Young votes, and his lack of dominance and lack of a defined peak make it likely that he won't get Hall of Fame votes -- he's not unlike Konerko in that regard.

Here is a complete list of the 11 first-timers on the ballot this year:

• Mark Buehrle
• Tim Hudson
• Torii Hunter
• Dan Haren
• Barry Zito
• Aramis Ramirez
• Shane Victorino
• A.J. Burnett
• Nick Swisher
• LaTroy Hawkins
• Michael Cuddyer

And here are the 14 holdovers, with the percent of votes they received last year in parenthesis. One must receive 75% of the votes to earn election to the Hall:

• Curt Schilling (70%)
• Roger Clemens (61%)
• Barry Bonds (60.7%)
• Omar Vizquel (52.6%)
• Scott Rolen (35.3%)
• Billy Wagner (31.7%)
• Gary Sheffield (30.5%)
• Todd Helton (29.2%)
• Manny Ramirez (28.2%)
• Jeff Kent (27.5%)
• Andruw Jones (19.4%)
• Sammy Sosa (13.9%)
• Andy Pettitte (11.3%)
• Bobby Abreu (5.5%)

So, do we think anyone gets in this year? I'm guessing Schilling gets the nod, even though I'm not personally a fan. Clemens and Bonds still have the steroids albatross hanging around their necks. It will be interesting to see if they can inch closer to the 75% mark. Vizquel remains the best defensive shortstop I've seen, but the sabermetrics guys don't like him, and he wasn't a good hitter.

Ballots are due Dec. 31, and results will be announced Jan. 26. We shall see.

Trivia time at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

So, I might have mentioned in a previous post that I played a trivia game at the Hall of Fame.

Here's how it worked: There was an auditorium of people at the Hall in Cooperstown, N.Y. -- the room was maybe 40 percent full -- and the first person to answer a trivia question was invited down "into the hot seat" to play the game.

The first question thrown out to the audience was, "Who was the Orioles starting pitcher the day Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak?" I correctly answered "Mike Mussina," and into the hot seat I went.

I was asked to pick a partner, and my girlfriend, Jen, did not want to play. So I asked for a volunteer, and fortunately, a Dodgers fan who really knew his stuff said he would join me.

The game consisted of nine "innings," each featuring one multiple choice question. As the innings progress, the question get increasingly difficult.

The question you see in the picture is the "first inning," and as you can see, that one was a layup. We answered easily. It obviously got more difficult. The toughest question I answered was, "Name the only player in baseball history to go 7 for 7 in a nine-inning game."

The answer is Rennie Stennett, but it was tricky, because the other choices were great players, such as Wade Boggs. You may think a player such as Boggs would have had seven hits in a game at one point, but he did not. Stennett did Sept. 16, 1975, against the Cubs, despite his modest .274 career batting average and .665 career OPS.

At any rate, this Dodgers fan and I advanced to the eighth inning before we got tripped up. We did not know who holds the record for most doubles in a single season. We thought it was Joe Medwick. It was Earl Webb, who had 67 doubles in 1931.

It's too bad, because we would have won had we gotten that question right. The "ninth inning" question was about the 1959 World Series, which was White Sox vs. Dodgers. Both the White Sox fan (me) and the Dodgers fan (my playing partner) knew that Larry Sherry had won two games and saved two games for Los Angeles in that six-game series.

I collected my parting gift, a program from the 2019 Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

There were two other people who got to play after me. A father-and-son combination, both of whom were Mets fans, made it through all nine innings and won the big prize -- a bat autographed by the 2019 Hall class. Had I had the same group of questions, I would have won -- I knew all nine that they correctly answered.

The third pairing was a couple of Yankees fans, and they lost in the fifth inning because they did not know that John Wathan owns the single-season record for stolen bases by a catcher.

At least they did a lot worse than me.

Harold Baines Day at Guaranteed Rate Field

In the American League, a team needs good production from its designated hitter. The 2019 White Sox don't get anything from their DHs, who have combined to post a .178/.264/.301 slash line this season.

That makes you appreciate the career of Harold Baines a little more, doesn't it? Baines was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame this year, and the Sox honored him for his achievement this past Sunday before a game against the Oakland A's.

Baines prepares to speak at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Humble as always, Baines spoke softly, for four minutes and 43 seconds, thanking his family, former teammates, the Sox organization and its fans.

The ceremony also featured speeches by Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa and two of Baines' closest friends and former teammates, Ron Kittle and Ozzie Guillen.

Other Sox Hall of Famers were on hand, including Frank Thomas, Tim Raines, Jim Thome and Carlton Fisk.

Among the other former Sox players present were Robin Ventura, Dan Pasqua, Ron Karkovice and John Cangelosi.

I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend this game, because the highlights of Baines' career shown on the scoreboard took me back to my childhood in the 1980s. Baines' best years with the Sox were from 1982-89, when he made four All-Star teams. Sure, the Sox weren't very good in those years -- except for 1983 -- but Baines was the best player on the team during the days when I was becoming a Sox fan and learning about baseball.

Baines' election to the Hall has been shrouded in controversy. Some people don't think he belongs, and to be honest, if I had a vote, I'm not sure I would have voted for him. That said, as a Sox fan, I refuse to apologize for being happy for Baines and his family. He was an outstanding player, and he's well-respected by any person he has ever been around.

And when I went to the Hall of Fame this summer, I enjoyed some of the Baines memorabilia on display. Take this locker of stuff:

Here's the bat Baines used to hit that famous home run in the 25th inning on May 9, 1984, against the Milwaukee Brewers:

Check out this old-school edition of Baseball Digest. I subscribe to this magazine, and did so when I was a kid, as well. I'm pretty sure I received this edition in the mail as a youngster:

Here's the poster next to the Baines' locker, detailing his career highlights:

And, of course, here's the plaque that will hang in Cooperstown, N.Y., forever. Not a replica, folks:

Congrats, Harold, and thanks for the memories!

A Hall of Fame shout-out to Yaz

If you've ever been to Cooperstown, N.Y., perhaps you're aware that Yastrzemski Sports is located on Main Street, one block away from the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

For years in Chicago, we joked about Ken "Hawk" Harrelson's frequent references to Carl Yastrzemski, or YAZ!, on White Sox TV broadcasts.

I could retire if I had a dollar for every time Harrelson reminded us that Yaz was "the American League's last Triple Crown winner." That occurred in 1967, in case you weren't aware.

Then Miguel Cabrera had to go and win the Triple Crown in the American League in 2012, sending Yaz's accomplishment to the background and spoiling the joke.

In any case, any reference to Yaz is enjoyable for me, so I had to take a few pictures when I saw his name attached to what is essentially a baseball card shop.

Here's the picture of Yaz that hangs on the window:

Besides the numerous baseball cards, the shop is filled with baseballs signed by all sorts of players, including quite a few Hall of Famers. There are a few other rare finds, too, and I had to laugh at this one:

After all, who doesn't want a nice, Albert Belle White Sox pennant? For the record, no, I did not buy it.

Swag from my recent trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame

Yes, I left the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown with a shopping bag. I won't apologize for it, because I bought some stuff that I didn't think I could find closer to home.

For example, this Harold Baines Hall of Fame T-shirt:

In fact, the Hall gift shop had a section for each of the 2019 inductees, and I picked this shirt off the shelf dedicated to Baines.

I also thought this shirt was cool; it lists every member of the Hall of Fame affiliated with the White Sox;

And, of course, no trip to the Hall would be complete without the standard T-shirt and hat combination:

I also cleaned out the book shop of anything White Sox-related:

And, of course, the program and yearbook from the Hall induction ceremony:

I bought the yearbook; I won program playing a trivia game, but that's a blog entry for another day.

Taking a baseball road trip that doesn't involve the crummy White Sox

The White Sox are 0-7 since the All-Star break after being swept in a four-game series at Kansas City this week.

Yes, the 36-62 Royals won four straight games against the Sox (42-51), who continue to find new lows in this interminable, hard-on-the-eyes rebuilding process.

But there is good news: I'm leaving town for a week, which means I won't have to watch or hear about this crappy baseball team for seven days. I'm taking a baseball trip that doesn't involve the Sox, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

My itinerary:

Sunday, July 20: Drive to Cleveland
Sunday, July 21: Royals vs. Indians at Progressive Field
Monday, July 22: Drive to Cooperstown, N.Y.
Tuesday, July 23: Visit National Baseball Hall of Fame
Wednesday, July 24: Drive to Pittsburgh
Thursday, July 25: Cardinals vs. Pirates at PNC Park
Friday, July 26: Drive home

I'm going to see a part of the country I haven't seen before, and visiting the Hall of Fame is a bucket list item. Can't wait.

Blogging will resume when I return home. Maybe the Sox will have won a game in the second half by then.