Feature Watch: Hall of Fame Votes & Awards Section
Posted by Neil Paine on December 4, 2009
Sadly, the 2009 MLB season is over, but that doesn't mean the world of baseball has gone quiet. The hot stove is warming up, of course, and over the past month we've also had a chance to take in the major-league award announcements, as well as the annual Hall of Fame ballot. Thanks to our Awards Section here at B-R, you can keep track of these developments and look back at past recipients of the game's highest honors.
First, there's the long-awaited addition of Hall of Fame balloting summaries. From the Awards Section, scroll down to the area marked "Hall of Fame Ballot and Voting Summaries" and you'll find links that lead to Hall of Fame voting results for every season since the HoF began bestowing its honors in 1936. On any of those pages, you'll see every player who was on the official ballot in that year, along with the number of years they had been on the ballot, the number of votes they garnered, what percentage of the total ballots cast contained their name, several of Bill James' HoF monitor stats, and of course, their traditional career batting and pitching statistics. Notice also that players who were voted in by special non-BBWAA committees, including the Veterans Committee and the Negro Leagues Committee, are included in separate tables to denote their different enshrinement circumstances. Also take note of the fact that you can navigate from any year's HoF voting results to the results of any other year by using the dropdown menu near the top of the page.
And for those not just interested in historical Hall of Fame elections, but also current and upcoming ones, we have projected ballots for each of the next 5 years (through 2014). And of course, you can sort the lists by each of the column headers -- for instance, clicking on "YoB" twice will allow you to sort in ascending order by the number of years on the ballot, giving you the players in their first year of eligibility at the top of the list. Barry Bonds in 2013, anybody?
The Awards Section contains more than just Hall of Fame data, though. We also have lists of (and voting summaries for) every major regular-season and postseason award, including the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year, Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers, and more. At the bottom of the main awards page, you'll find an area called "Baseball Award Voting Summaries", with a series of years -- and similar to our Hall of Fame area, just click any year, and you'll be taken to the voting summaries for every major award in that season.
As always, the Hall of Fame and Awards data is updated through the most current season, so be sure to spend some quality time with the freshly-minted results from a few weeks ago, and check out the first-timers on next year's HoF ballot while you're at it. And don't worry, just like the awards information you're used to being able to find on indivdual player pages, you'll also be able to see a player's history of Hall of Fame voting results on his page now -- take Bert Blyleven's, for instance.
Now, I do have to say that because this HoF data is brand new, there are likely still bugs in the vote totals. So please report any issues that you come across, and together we can continue to make Baseball-Reference your one stop for baseball information from the past and the present. Enjoy the new data!
December 6th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Making the best site on the internet even better.
"every player who was on the official ballot in that year, along with the number of years they had been on the ballot...." Reference to official ballots is a little misleading for the early elections. I think that it has only been since some time in the 1950s that the writers were sent a list of names and instructed that only those named were eligible candidates - before that, the votes were all, in some sense, write-ins (except for the occasional runoff election).
Even for more recent elections, there are some problems with the phrase, "on the official ballot." E.g., the 1994 table,
http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_1994.shtml
says it was the 3rd year on the (offical) ballot for Pete Rose. My understanding is that Rose has never been on the ballot. It was the 3rd time he got some votes, but he wasn't actually on any ballot.
Warren Spahn is always listed among those inducted on their first ballot. I was astonished to see that this is technically untrue, as your table shows he got a vote in 1958. Spahn was, of course, still active in 1958 - he pitched two no-hitters after 1958 - and the five-year waiting rule had gone into effect some years earlier, so this is either some writer brushing the rules aside, or a mistake in your tables. The vote for Spahn doesn't show up in the tables in the 3rd edition of Total Baseball.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
One more little thing. Occasionally a player is on the official ballot but gets zero votes. For example, I think that happened to Hubie Brooks in the 2000 election, Howard Johnson and Andy van Slyke in 2001, Danny Jackson, Mickey Tettleton, Mitch Williams and Todd Worrell in 2003, etc. If you're going to list "every player who was on the official ballot," you ought to list the zero-vote guys (and I notice that you did do this for 2009, so maybe it's just a question of availability of the data). A couple more examples: Danny Darwin and Bob Tewksbury, 2004.