Circle of Greats 1977 Run-Off: Beltran vs. Halladay

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There was a tie vote in the Circle of Greats 1977 Balloting, so we will have a run-off election between the two tied players, Carlos Beltran and Roy Halladay. More after the jump.

  Seasons G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB
Carlos Beltran 1998-2017 2586 11031 9768 1582 2725 565 78 435 1587 312 49 1084 1795 .279 .350 .486 .837 119 4751
  per 162 games 162 691 612 99 171 35 5 27 99 20 3 68 112 .279 .350 .486 .837 119 298
  Seasons W L W-L% ERA G GS CG SHO IP BB SO ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9 SO/W
Roy Halladay 1998-2013 203 105 .659 3.38 416 390 67 20 2749.1 592 2117 131 3.39 1.178 8.7 0.8 1.9 6.9 3.58
  per 162 games 17 9 .659 3.38 35 33 6 2 232 50 179 131 3.39 1.178 8.7 0.8 1.9 6.9 3.58
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 2/7/2022.
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One Brief Shining Moment

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The careers of most major league players are brief and unremarkable. Of 15,403 retired players who debuted since 1901, only 5,102 (33%) posted careers of 200 or more games, and just 2,745 (18%) managed 500 contests. Yet, even among the other 82% of players can be found those who showed promise of becoming successful major leaguers in extended careers, promise that, for one reason or another, went unfulfilled. It is to those players that this post is dedicated. More after the jump.

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HHS Awards – 2021 Cy Youngs

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Greetings, once again, friends!

So we’re not dragging out our awards voting into forever, we’re going to handle both Cy Young awards with a single post. I will present the candidate, some statistics, and a brief paragraph’s synopsis of considerations. I don’t want to tarry too long here, because there’s a lot to consider! Just remember to check the bottom of the post for results! Balloting will close Friday, December 17 at 11:59:59, your local time. That is, I’ll tabulate officially whatever is there Saturday morning when I wake up. 🙂 Post after the jump!

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HHS Awards – 2021 NL MVP

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Hello, HHS friends!

Here’s our obligatory comment: I’ve been more-or-less totally MIA in 2021. I apologize for that. There’s no excuse, no fancy reasoning. Life is just hard. Hoping you did read my review of Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100. And now, with only lockout news to “comfort” us baseball fans, let’s try to keep things positive. It’s awards season! We need something to vote on before the COG elections in January, am I right?

In 2020, I did not run an awards post. The season was too short, things crept up too fast… it just didn’t happen. But I don’t want that to continue in 2021.

Look, I’m going to be the first to acknowledge: I think the vote-for-pitchers, don’t-vote-for-pitchers debate really muddied the waters in some of our last few discussions; I was thinking that, this year, we would switch from a mixed vote to separate awards for the pitchers and position players. But then, along came a player who screwed the whole thing up. So this year, my initial plan was to do separate awards for pitchers and hitters. Unfortunately, there’s one big reason we just can’t do that. So I’m not going to ask us to do so this year. Okay; without further ado, I believe we should start on the senior circuit this year, as well. So who are our candidates? (As always, description after the jump; rules at the bottom of the post.)

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Book Review: The Baseball 100

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The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski

I’m going to start with melancholy. On the antepenultimate page of The Baseball 100, I started feeling a profound sadness. Now, you don’t get 820-odd pages into a book if you don’t like it; it wasn’t a sadness of disappointment. It was a feeling that has accompanied me a handful of times in my life (near the end of the Harry Potter books, during the movie Black Panther, right near the end of Pride & Prejudice, the end of Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography… surely there’ve been others, though) when I start to mourn the loss of a thing that’s not yet over. I was reading those words about the #1 ranked player, and I was sad to leave the world of the book. I didn’t want to stop reading Posnanski’s prose. I didn’t want to stop hearing the stories of ballgames and childhoods and the way the game has changed and the ways it’s remained the same. I wanted just to be in the moment… which took me, rather profoundly, out of the moment.

But, damn it all, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t shut the book to let it drag out. Posnanski’s writing is just too good.

OK, so all the mea culpas here – I’ve been pretty absent from the site for a few months. Life is busy, what can I say? Sometime after the World Series, I will get some season-end awards vote posts up. But first, I want to share my review of this book with you all.

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