In some of the other Hall of Fame threads, I've brought up reasons that certain players are greatly underrated by the electorate, specifically value coming from places like walks and defense and also, being a third basemen. Sky Andrecheck wrote an article for Sports Illustrated touching on five biases in the Hall of Fame vote.
1) Walks are underrated - Agreed, and I've said the same thing here in other threads.
2) Become a closer - I think it's too early to tell on this. It certainly hasn't helped Lee Smith, while somehow it served to help a vastly inferior pitcher in Bruce Sutter, but as I said, too early to tell here. I don't think it's a particularly noteworthy bias though.
3) Be flashy/spectacular, not slow/steady - Agreed. He brings up Nolan Ryan, who I think embodies this in the most extreme way. He certainly was exciting and unique, but that's led to him receiving one of the highest vote percentages ever while also being routinely thrown into "best pitcher ever" discussions, despite not actually being appreciably more valuable than a host of other pitchers that have struggled or waited to get into the Hall like Bert Blyleven, Don Sutton, and Phil Niekro.
4) Third basemen are underrated - Another thing I've brought up myself. And, upon reading this article, I was reminded of how Eddie Mathews polled at 32% on his first ballot and had to wait until his 5th ballot to make it in, despite him being inarguably the best third basemen ever at the time of his retirement (and he's still #2).
5) Have good teammates - Agreed wholeheartedly here. If Jack Morris hadn't had the superb and underrated double play combination of Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker playing behind him, would he still be on the ballot at this point, let alone gaining traction?
Sky then looked at it statistically over at The Baseball Analysts. His conclusions:
In all, the empirical analysis shows the following:
1) HoF voters undervalue walks (p-value .001)
2) HoF voters overvalue batting average (p-value .001)
3) HoF voters overvalue longer careers (p-value .001)
4) HoF voters undervalue starting pitchers (p-value .001)
5) HoF voters overvalue relief pitchers (p-value .001) though this bias seems to be decreasing
6) HoF voters overvalue Wins and Losses for pitchers (p-value .003)
7) HoF voters undervalue players at defensive positions (p-value .005)
8) HoF voters overvalue homeruns/RBI (p-value .06)
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Originally Posted by BenFink
): "(To the rest of the guys in the booth with him) You or I could step into the batter's box and draw a walk, but that's not what makes a hitter a HoFer." This of course completely glosses over the fact that if a hitter repeatedly demonstrates that they're unwilling to take pitches, eventually pitchers will stop throwing them pitches in the strike zone. Then he goes on to wax eloquent about how he saw Dawson and Raines in the clubhouse everyday and you knew who was the leader and who was the follower and how Dawson always carried himself like a HoFer and had that special aura about him. Really Dick? What colour was that aura exactly? Or were you in some kind of permanent acid flashback haze back then? This is the same local writer who was ripped a new one by FJM (RIP) when he reminisced at one of the recent winter meetings that was a bit slow for news about conceiving one of his daughters (how humiliating for her) at a past winter meetings at the same locale. *facepalm*
Lance Parrish of course completed the whole defense up the middle on championship teams thing. Where so many teams have filled these four positions with excellent defenders by reputation, these four actually were awesome defenders and the team's results during their primes had a lot to do with these four players. 