Does MLB Gives the BBWAA too Much Power

Read Time:2 Minute, 51 Second

One has to wonder why MLB gives so much control to the Baseball Writers Association of America instead of allowing players, coaches and umpires the ability to make decisions when it comes to selecting Hall of Famers and annual awards.

After all, doesn’t it make more sense to allow individuals who are actively on the field responsible for making these decisions? Why do we continually allow an organization that currently has 700 members working for newspapers, magazines, and major websites to have this kind of responsibility? Sure, they cover major league baseball throughout the season, but that doesn’t necessarily make them experts. Some of these individuals have never played baseball past high school if they even played that long.

Allowing this to continue is absurd. It sometimes feels like it’s more of a popularity contest than it is an achievement. Most of the members of the BBWAA are stuck on analytical crap, then they are with who is deserving. None is more evident than Wednesday’s Cy Young voting. How can anyone with any perspective on the game of baseball vote for Padres starting pitcher Blake Snell as the 2023 Cy Young award winner and not even include Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Spencer Strider? It’s completely ludicrous. When revealing their reasons they use far-fetched analytics that no one cares about. Sure Strider didn’t have the same ERA as Snell, but he led the league with 20 wins and 281 strikeouts.

Will someone please tell me when all this other analytical crap became more important than winning? Isn’t winning 20 games more valuable than winning 14? Some will say Strider was backed by a better offensive team. Although this is true, who cares? The bottom line is he was good enough to go out there and provide his team with more opportunities to win than any other pitcher in MLB. What makes this point even more valid is that Strider didn’t get any first-place votes, he only got six second-place votes and finished fourth in the Cy Young voting behind Snell, Logan Webb, and Zac Gallen. One can even argue that Gallen deserved the Cy Young over Snell.

How can a pitcher like Webb who finished the season with an 11-13 record come in second place in the Cy Young voting ahead of a guy that was 20-5? The obvious answer is that they are allowing clueless individuals who think they are bigger than the game to make these decisions. I guarantee you that if the panel consisted of former and current players, coaches, and umpires most of them would have voted for Strider.

It doesn’t get any better when we switch gears to the Hall of Fame voting in MLB. Talk about politics, none is more true than the writers voting on this particular feat. Who the heck are they to judge if a player violated the integrity of the game? Once again shove the analytics where the sun doesn’t shine. A player should be judged by their accomplishments on the field and if it’s ok with MLB to allow these individuals on the ballot then the integrity piece has already been given the stamp of approval

We can go on and on about what is right and what is wrong but at the end of the day, MLB needs to make the final decision on the Hall of Fame inductees and the annual awards, not the BBWAA.