BBWA Appears To Be Learning

After lots of debate over a relatively weak field, Goose Gossage is your lone member of the 2008 Hall Of Fame class. Absolutely no issue with this selection, if Bruce Sutter is a Hall Of Famer, then so is Gossage. The rest of the ballot shows some decent progress as well. Bert Blyleven jumped from 47.7% of the vote last year all the way to 61.9% this year, actually giving him hope of being elected sometime in the next for years. Meanwhile Jack Morris stayed well away from enshrinement. The results didn't manage to perfectly tow the saber metric line, however. Jim Rice came within 13 votes of election, almost certainly securing his election next year, and giving a big boost to Juan Gonzalez's Hall Of Fame campaign.  The other huge disappointment is Tim Raines, who was better than Lou Brock at just about everything, getting only 23.5% of the vote. It looks like he'll become the saber hero once Blyleven makes his way off the ballot.

While seeing Rice and Raines' relative positions on the ballot is disappointing, the fact that Blyleven's vote count has more than doubled since 2003 shows that incessenently whining about something on the Internet could actually have a positive effect. Who knew?