Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike D.
The Hall of Fame standard, based on WAR (yeah, yeah, I know..."what is it good for") has actually going UP over time. The Hall of Fame did get watered down...almost immediately after opening. The last several decades have actually been pushing the standard up, not down.
Of course, a lot of the reason the standard got watered down was, as someone else, not the writers, but the various iterations of the vets committee.
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I keep hearing this "watered down" comment a lot in regard to the baseball HOF. Just to let everyone know though, since the beginning of major league baseball was first recognized back in the 1870's, through today, there have been a total of 22,534 players recognized as having played in the majors since 1876. Or 22,860 players if you choose to recognize the National Association that began play in 1871 as also being a major league. At least those are the numbers according to Baseball Reference, which I believe is a somewhat respected site for baseball info. Also, these totals apparently do include anyone that played just in the Negro Leagues now recognized as major leagues as well. And according to the Cooperstown Baseball HOF site, there are now a total of 340 electees to the HOF, of which only 268 were actually former major league players.
268/22,534 = 1.189314%
So roughly speaking, only a little over 1% of all the major league ball players of all time have made it into the HOF. If you wanted to keep that percentage to no more that 1.0% ever, that would mean cutting 42 current HOF electees from the list.
Or to look at it another way.
2022 - 1876 = 146 years
268 HOF players / 146 years = 1.8356 HOF players elected on average per year that MLB has existed since 1876.
If instead you felt there should be no more than say 1-1/2 HOF level players for each year we've had MLB in existence, that would mean there should only be 219 (146 X 1.5) current MLB players in the HOF, and we should be cutting 49 current HOF electees from the list.
So, for those who think/believe the HOF has been watered down, what percentage of MLB players overall, or number of MLB players per year, should be included in baseball's HOF so it isn't watered down? Just the top 1.0%, or maybe the top 0.5%? Or maybe the number of HOFers should be limited to no more than 1.5, or even just 1, per year that MLB has been around?