The Steroid Era: New Standards for HOF voting

Advocates of Sabermetrics point to the noticeable discrepancy between advancements in statistical analysis for performance evaluation and the slow adaption of these methods by voters. Media critics criticize the inherent conflict of interest of sportswriters who play dual roles as reporters of news and, as voters, creators of news.

But still another is the total lack of unifying guidelines or standards to which voters can be held accountable. Official election rules mentions just a single line pertaining to voting criteria: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

As a result, some voters have grown lazy in their reasoning for admittance or exclusion. One such example is San Francisco Chronicle’s John Shea, a voting member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. In 2007, the year Mark McGwire was first listed on the ballot, Shea took the moral road to explain his opposition:

"“It’s not as much about his numbers as his unwillingness to explain himself after his appearance before Congress.  It’s tough to vote for McGwire when asked to consider the integrity and character of a guy who won’t refute that he broke the law to cheat the game.”"

In the aftermath of McGwire’s public admission of using steroids this week, Shea was still adamantly opposed, but this time it was “about his numbers,” a reason that seems contradictory to his previous statements:

"“If the fifth ballot were today, I probably wouldn’t vote for him again. It’s commendable he came out and came clean, but that’s an awful lot of his career that he was juiced. His numbers obviously reflected his drug use.”"

Whether personal bias plays a role in Shea’s opposition to McGwire is unclear and not really important. Shea is entitled to change his opinion and he is merely taking advantage of an individualistic voting system. If the Baseball HOF had an official position for how to deal with Steroid Era players, however, personal opinions like these could only carry so much weight.

Then again, from a perspective of relevance, the Hall must be thrilled about the attention these inequities are getting. If it were a fair system, I wouldn’t have just spent all morning doing research for this post. Neither would the hundreds of other writers/bloggers/reporters who will inevitably write hundreds of thousands more wordson the subject.