MLB Reinstates Pete Rose and Joe Jackson

[selmaborntidefan]

and Rob Manfred just managed to get dumber than "let's move the ASG out of Atlanta."


Pete Rose, Former Phillies Star, Can Now be Considered for Baseball Hall of Fame


Hey, SI, Pete Rose spent 19 year as a player in Cincinnati, he spent 5 as a Phillie.
He won twice as many WS as a Red.
He broke 1K, 2K, and 3K hits as a Red and then set the hit record as a Red
He won the MVP as a Red.
He won the Rookie of the Year as a Red.
He had a 44-game hitting streak as a Red.

But "sure", he was a........former Phillies star....

 

[dtgreg]

Let's reinstate Benedict Arnold while we're at it.

 

[tusks_n_raider]

and Rob Manfred just managed to get dumber than "let's move the ASG out of Atlanta."


Pete Rose, Former Phillies Star, Can Now be Considered for Baseball Hall of Fame


Hey, SI, Pete Rose spent 19 year as a player in Cincinnati, he spent 5 as a Phillie.
He won twice as many WS as a Red.
He broke 1K, 2K, and 3K hits as a Red and then set the hit record as a Red
He won the MVP as a Red.
He won the Rookie of the Year as a Red.
He had a 44-game hitting streak as a Red.

But "sure", he was a........former Phillies star....

I’m kind of shocked by this.

Fun fact:

Even though Pete Rose has about 500 more hits than Hank Aaron… Hank still hit for a higher average in addition to being the HR King.

Aaron didn’t bet on games either.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

I’m kind of shocked by this.

Fun fact:

Even though Pete Rose has about 500 more hits than Hank Aaron… Hank still hit for a higher average in addition to being the HR King.

Aaron didn’t bet on games either.

Think about this: Pete Rose has a career WAR (wins above replacement) of 79.6. That's damn good, Rose ranks 41st all-time, right ahead of Joe DiMaggio and ahead of some bona fide superstars. Think of it like this: there's been over 20,000 guys make an appearance in a big league game; there's only been 761 who played AT LEAST 1,000 games. So Pete Rose is in some pretty elite company with a WAR of 79.6. From the time he left the Reds after 1978 until he retired, his overall WAR was only 0.1

But Hank Aaron not only has a better WAR than Pete.......his is 143.2, which is fifth on the all-time list. Barry Bonds has the highest, which may suggest WAR isn't all it's cracked up to be given Barry never won a championship, so exactly how hard could he be to replace in terms of winning a pennant?

I always knew Hank was a better overall player than Pete; I had no idea he was THAT much better. Pete played 364 more games and went to the plate about 2000 more times. Basically, in those 364 more games, Pete his .249 and then played long enough to break the record. And let's admit it, Rose was washed up after the 1981 season, where he broke Musial's NL hits record. (He was so bad, he was actually benched during the 1983 World Series).

Aaron also stole 42 more bases and was caught less than half as many times as Pete stealing. The only place Pete was better than Hank, quite frankly, was he struck out a bit less. Pete got 2 walks per year on average more than Hank, but the caught stealing (7 per year vs 4 for Aaron) undid it.

And Aaron had 1100 more total bases despite those 500 fewer hits, in part because he added on three bases every time he went around the nearly 600 more home runs he hit than Rose.

 

[Bazza]

Charlie Hustle!

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Charlie Hustle!

I can see the arguments either way, but the part that is disgraceful to me is, "Now that the guy is DEAD, let's retract that ban". I mean, they have royally screwed him even worse than they did.

 

[Ratal]

I can see the arguments either way, but the part that is disgraceful to me is, "Now that the guy is DEAD, let's retract that ban". I mean, they have royally screwed him even worse than they did.

Manfred basically said as much. He essentially said that the worst punishment they can get is knowing that they will never be in the HoF while they are alive.

 

[Bazza]

I can see the arguments either way, but the part that is disgraceful to me is, "Now that the guy is DEAD, let's retract that ban". I mean, they have royally screwed him even worse than they did.

I agree 100%, Bill.

But hey.....it's PRO sports, so what would one expect?

Sadly......it stopped being about the game a long time ago, IMHO.....

Appreciate your thoughts, as always, my friend!

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Manfred basically said as much. He essentially said that the worst punishment they can get is knowing that they will never be in the HoF while they are alive.

Yes, and wasn't it nice of them to suddenly CREATE THAT RULE just a few months before Rose was going to be on the ballot?

Pete Rose gambled.
Pete Rose was wrong.
Pete Rose wasted opportunities to fix it.

But he was right about one thing: "if I had been addicted to DRUGS rather than gambling, they'd have suspended me and paid for my rehab." And he's not wrong. And Rose also got blamed for Giamatti's death, which made his rise that much more difficult.

I always suspected Vincent had it in for Rose (it came across all the time) and he was never gonna say, "Yeah, I told the HOF they ought to stick it to him."

I was all for crucifying Rose over gambling until baseball looked the other way and ruined all their records anyway with steroids.

 

[Ratal]

I think the issue with Rose is that there is no way to know for certain if he ever fixed a game.

I feel more for Shoeless Joe. He had an amazing series. From everything I have read, he did take money, but there was no point in which they can identify that didn't give 100%. I always felt like he took the money and had no intention to throw a game.

 

[lowend]

This is as dumb as the NCAA vacating wins. You've got cheaters all over the hall. Should have either let him in while he was alive or stand your ground and never let him in.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

The optics of this are more of an intended insult to Rose than an honor. It screams, "We knew we should have put him in for years, but we weren't going to give him the pleasure or the joy of getting to experience it. So we waited until he died."

 

[Cruloc]

Joe Jackson and Pete Rose.....both should have already been in the HoF in my opinion. But I also think Bonds and Clemens should be in as well.

So I guess the precedent is set to where they'll wait until some of the steroid guys are dead, then put them in.

This reinstatement move after death stinks. Its petty nonsense by grown men.

Jackson and Rose can't be considered for the Hall until the Classic Baseball Era Committee meets in December 2027. I didn't even know until today there was a Classic Baseball Era Committee. They can only consider players stats before 1980. Who comes up with this crap.

This feels like a committee along the lines of Steve Martin in The Jerk.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

I can't follow this....

I think the issue with Rose is that there is no way to know for certain if he ever fixed a game.

I think it's fair to say that we can view the fact he did not bet on EVERY game as a de facto admission to the gamblers that Pete was sending the signal "I don't think we're going to win tonight." That doesn't mean he was throwing the games, but it DOES mean the gamblers knew to bet on the opposition, which is close enough to the same thing.

I feel more for Shoeless Joe. He had an amazing series. From everything I have read, he did take money, but there was no point in which they can identify that didn't give 100%.

Meh, this canard has been around a long time and ASSUMES that EVERY GAME in that World Series was fixed. Except they weren't. In the KNOWN fixed games 1, 4, and 8, Joe went 3-for-17. He did have 3 RBIs in the 8th inning of the final game...when the Reds were ahead, 10-1. And he also played out of position in left field to the point the Reds - who had NINE triples in that World Series - hit 3 to him. Triples to a guy out of position with a good arm.

The one piece of evidence that might save him a bit is that he had three of Chicago's ten hits in game 2. And yet both White Sox runs were unearned in that game.

I mean, Chick Gandil (.233) hit better in the series than FIVE of the Reds' eight regulars despite the fact two White Sox pitchers were throwing them easy tosses to hit. So are we going to say now that Gandil wasn't throwing the series or the Reds were? The Reds made 12 errors in that series...exactly the same number as the White Sox so again...were the Reds actually throwing the series, too? (Btw - Hod Eller, who threw Game 8 for the Reds reported to his manager he'd been approached about a fix).

Jackson participated in the fix and got $5K. Now...whether we should look at baseball players the same way a century ago with poor folks might be a better discussion. Rose had no need to do what he did he was a millionaire.

I always felt like he took the money and had no intention to throw a game.

Yeah, but that's like Rose not betting on his team - it's the same thing no matter how we look at it.

 

[stlimprov]

One might argue that Rose "fixed" games simply by virtue of being the manager and/or by not knowing when to say when. The Reds finished 2nd in their division 4 straight years under Rose (1985-88), and in their first full season without him won the World Series (1990). The last 6 years of his career, which account for 991 of his hits, he had a cumulative WAR of -.3.

Even then there was the vibe that his fixation on breaking the hit record probably came at the expense of the team. I say this with the recognition that I'm sure Marge Schott (and others) valued the marketing buzz, so it wasn't just Rose's fixation. But the whole thing was a bit of a ridiculous circus. And for a guy who claimed to be all about the baseball, it rang hollow.

And I think that THAT is what a lot of the Rose animus was really about: he identified as being this ultimate warrior, all about the love of the game and all that, and clearly wasn't. Like Lance Armstrong, those people can pull a lot of that for a while, but eventually they lose leverage and there are plenty of people happy to see, if not deliver, some degree of payback.

It's also kinda interesting that the two players with the most hits are pretty universally recognized as...uhm... jerks, while #3 and #4 are pretty universally lauded for their character.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

One might argue that Rose "fixed" games simply by virtue of being the manager and/or by not knowing when to say when. The Reds finished 2nd in their division 4 straight years under Rose (1985-88), and in their first full season without him won the World Series (1990). The last 6 years of his career, which account for 991 of his hits, he had a cumulative WAR of -.3.

Even then there was the vibe that his fixation on breaking the hit record probably came at the expense of the team. I say this with the recognition that I'm sure Marge Schott (and others) valued the marketing buzz, so it wasn't just Rose's fixation. But the whole thing was a bit of a ridiculous circus. And for a guy who claimed to be all about the baseball, it rang hollow.

I want you to know I dispute none of what you say here. Rose was brought back to Cincinnati specifically to draw the crowds and break the record, the pennant being secondary in 1985. There 100% WAS an obsession that bordered on insanity, an obvious "let's make some money off this thing." Grifting - legal but grifting - if you will.

Having said that, in Rose's first year as a manager, the Reds improved by 19 games in the standings and went a stellar 19-9 in September, closing a gap of 10 games on August 27 to 5.5 in a month. The Dodgers didn't exactly play poorly (18-12) in September, so it's more of a case of LA being better than the Reds, which wasn't a surprise. When Cincinnati finished second in 1985, it was a meteoric rise for a team that had been lousy for three years until Rose arrived. His second year, they were three games worse and lost the division by ten, largely because they went 2-16 during late April and early May and fell so far behind they had no chance. Rose only played half the season and though he never "officially" retired, he played his final game on August 17. Perhaps no so coincidentally, the Reds had their hottest streak of the season immediately following his removal from the lineup, going 14-4 in their next 18 contests.

The Reds actually won two games fewer in 1987 than they did in 1986 - but nobody noticed because they finished second. AGAIN. And were only six games out this time. In fact, the Reds won only one game less than that year's world champion Twins did in the regular season. In 1988, the Reds again finished second and improved to 87 wins - three more than 1987 and in all honesty attributable not to the Reds being better but to their claiming three more wins from the utterly atrocious Atlanta Braves than the previous year.

In all honesty, the second-place finishes covered up the fact that Rose was NOT that great a manager. He wasn't terrible, but he wasn't as good as his finishes suggested either.


As far as the Reds winning the World Series, I'm not so sure that makes a compelling arugment:

WIN TOTALS REDS
1985 - 89
1986 - 86
1987 - 84
1988 - 87
1989 - 75
1990 - 91
1991 - 74
1992 - 90

The 1991 Reds were worse than the 1989 team that could be said to have been distracted or at a minimum led by a distracted leader. But what exactly were the differences between the 1989-90-91 Reds BESIDES the manager?

C - Jeff Reed replaced by Joe Oliver
1B - Todd Benzinger replaced by the better Hal Morris
2B - 3 different guys in 3 years
SS - Barry Larkin
3B - Chris Sabo
RF - Paul O'Neill
CF - Eric Davis
LF - Ken Griffey followed by Billy Hatcher
Starters: Browning, Jackson, and Rijo all 3 years (R Mahler in 1989), plus Jack Armstrong's career year in 1990
Relievers: Charlton and Dibble; traded John Franco for Randy Myers in December 1989

Chris Sabo only played about 1/2 the games in 1989 because he was injured. This after he won ROY in 1988. Eric Davis missed 1/2 of 1991 with carryover from his injury in the 1990 World Series. The Reds actually had a losing record after the All-Star break in 1990 (41-42), but they had a large enough lead to take home the pennant.

In other words, while I AGREE with you that Rose's managerial status MIGHT lend itself to "thrown" games, I just don't think the cited evidence supports it. Of course, the argument that I DO accept is the fact he avoided betting on some games - which sends the signal to gamblers that "I think we're gonna lose." In such a case, he's as guilty as if he'd rigged it.

Great post btw.