Hall of Fame Voting is all about Superior Intellect

The Hall of Fame voting must be controlled by purveyors of intellect vastly greater than my own. That's the only way I can rationalize almost any result or sample poll -- people smarter than I must be making decisions at a macro-baseball level that I can only dream of. The annual complaints about Dale Murphy's Hall of Fame candidacy will be rolling around again on Wednesday, when the Baseball Writers Association of America reveals its voting for this year's entrants.

Dale Murphy is sure to be fairly low on the list.

The bloggers of SB Nation got together over the last month to conduct a BBWAA-style voting of their own. An event I was hopeful would yield more favorable results for our erstwhile outfielder. To explain my voting (and hopefully sway others) I put up a post where I suggested Hall of Fame candidacy for everyone that fell on or above the "Dale Murphy Line." Assuming, as I do, that Murph and his decadal dominance and accompanying career statistics should be enough to warrant entry into the hallowed Hall, then I would need to vote for everyone else who fell on or above that line (per my assessment -- likely a flawed metric, indeed).

My assessment led to the inclusion of six players, Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Andre Dawson, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, and Dale Murphy.

I thought the blog-based voting that SB Nation conducted would be a bit more partial towards allowing more players into the Hall, but if anything, the bloggers who voted seemed to be even more stingy than the baseball writers. The results of that voting are after the jump. Needless to say, only Bert Blyleven gained entry, and our very own beloved number-3 got just 17.5% of the vote. What! Why are we bloggers so lock-step with the writers?

Totally frustrating. Before we get to the jump and more of my complaints, I thought it would be a fun idea to do a Talking Chop sample Hall of Fame ballot. Follow this link to go to the Google Form and fill out your HOF ballot. I'll keep voting open until Tuesday night, then I'll tally the totals and see if even a Braves-site is partial towards one of its own.

After the jump are the full results of the SB Nation balloting, plus more of my astonishment.

Here are the results:

I just can't wrap my head around guys like Martinez, and even Larkin, getting more votes than Murphy. The fact that Alomar didn't make it is also a bit shocking, but also shocking that Larkin came so close. Larking was good, but he wasn't great! He had a few good years, especially for a shortstop, but he was wildly inconsistent and frequently injured. He only played 140 or more games seven times in his 19-year career. Murphy had nine consecutive years of playing 150 or more games, including a stretch of four years where he played in every single Atlanta Braves game. Barry Larkin is NOT a Hall of Famer.

Ugh! I could go on and on about this, but what's the point. No one outside of the South remembers what kind of player Murphy was or how he dominated the 80's. He was second in homeruns to Mike Schmidt, second in RBI to Eddie Murray, ahead of both of those guys and behind only Ricky Henderson, Robin Yount, and Dwight Evans in runs scored, all of that while likely being the most durable player of the decade by playing in the most games. His rate stats too were comparable with the Hall of Famers from that decade.

Make sure you vote, and we'll see what Atlanta fans think. Maybe in the end I will be proven the vastly inferior intellect by even my own readers.