Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.

—Marilyn "Pete" Monroe

Yesterday, Major League Baseball released the 2005 Hall of Fame baseball writers' ballot. The obvious choice on this year's ballot is first timer Wade Boggs, a certain first-ballot inductee. With just 27 players on the ballot, 12 first-timers, this is one of the smallest pools ever presented to the writers. Perhaps it will simplify the vote to such a degree that one or two more inductees will be culled from the bubble candidates—can I get a Ryne Sandberg, brothers and sisters?

I would like to take a look at the writers' ballot as I did last year and with a little help from a study on the Hall elections that I did last offseason. First, here is the ballot with some pertinent data for each player:

They did a decent job of selecting the best candidates from this year's newly eligible players. Of the first-timers with at least 122 career Win Shares Jeff Blauser (154) and
Brian McRae (132) were the only ones overlooked.

Now, let's run the candidates through their paces. Here is a comparison using Bill James's Hall of Fame criteria. Also, I threw in Blauser, McRae, and the other overlooked newly eligibles with at least 100 Win Shares:

Next, let's compare the players to their similar players from Baseball-Reference.com. How many of the similar players who were eligible for the Hall are actually in? We'll also throw in career Win Shares. Using the data from my Hall study last season, we know that 337 Win Shares is the Hall average. Finally, from the six criteria in both tables, we'll rate the candidates based on the percentage of those tests that each candidate passed:

Boggs and Blyleven got the highest marks passing five of six tests. Dawson, Morris, Murphy, and Rice all passed at least half of them. Besides Boggs, Strawberry is the only new candidate who passes at least one test.

All of this leads me to my final assessment. As a point of reference, I have included the voting percentage for each candidate over the last three years and the all-time high for each:

There's one more thing that bodes well for this year's class. As I mentioned previously, this is one of the smallest ballots of all time. Let's take a look at how the smaller pools have faired in the past. Here are the ten smallest:

That's an average of 6.81% inducted in these classes as compared to 2.85% as an overall average, or about three times the average. Of the ten years in which the writers failed to select a single player, none had fewer than 35 men on the ballot and just one had fewer than 47. Also, of the 14 seasons in which the writers selected at least 6% of the available candidates, eight were from ballots of 33 or fewer.

So maybe this is the year that the writers start to whittle down the list of those in baseball's purgatory, the players who never amass enough votes to gain election but earn enough to remain on the ballot year after year. I'm hoping that writers feel Sandberg has completed his penance for not playing the bulk of his career during the offensive surge of the last eleven or so seasons. Maybe they will take Sandberg and spot him a buddy, perhaps Bruce Sutter. Dare I dream that Blyleven even has a shot? No, I daren't.

Anyway, of the new candidates, I doubt that more than one or two will remain on the ballot next year. I don't think that a small class will help the likes of Steinbach and Montgomery.

Just a few more Hall-related items: Let's take a look at last year's candidate pool and review my predictions for each. First the pertinent criteria as in the lists above:

Now, the predictions and the actual results:

I did get Eckersley and Molitor right and still may be right about Sandberg. The one thing that surprises me is that I predicted a few more of the new candidates in 2004 would at least stick around on the ballot, but none did. Maybe that's why I'm being so hard on this year's new guys.

Finally, here are the career Win Shares leaders for those players not already in the Hall of Fame, including active and not-yet-Hall-eligible players. I have included all players with at least 250 career Win Shares plus those active players with at least 200. It's a long list, but you can suffer through it:

Parts I, II, III, IV, V, and VI

I have one last note on the ridiculousness of the Rookie of the Year eligibility rules. Since they were instituted in 1971, there have been five players who exceed the eligibility thresholds have received votes. One was this year.

Here's the list:

Nate Robertson was this year. Greg Mathews received one vote in 1987 after winning 11 games in 1986. And they barred Lew Ford. Disgraceful.

Parts I, II, III, IV, and V

Next in our review of the most overlooked players in award-voting history is Rookie of the Year. The ROY award was by far the most complicated study and comes with the most caveats.

What is a rookie after all?

The current eligibility rules are that the player enters the given year with fewer than 130 career at-bats, 50 career innings pitched, and forty-five days of major-league experience. These were set forth in 1971. This year, Lew Ford met the first two but not the third. The problem is that you have to work in the commissioner's office to be able to calculate major-league experience; the other two are readily available. I was unable to find the rules prior to 1971 but will continue scanning my old TSN Baseball Guides.

The ROY, like the Cy Young, was at first just given out to one player in the entire majors. In 1947 and '48 only one Rookie of the Year per year was awarded. From 1949 on, each league has its own ROY winner.

For this study, I will base eligibility on the first two criteria above (<130 ABs and <50 IP). I will lump all players together for 1947-48 and separate them by league for every year since. This will mean that players who were not considered eligible at the time (like Ford) will be included in the list, and I'm fine with that. I think that it demonstrates how esoteric and meaningless the third rule (i.e., fewer than 45 days on a major-league roster) is.

So without further ado here's the list:

I'm sorry it's so long but I wanted to include all of the overlooked rookies who actually finished first in their leagues in Win Shares (i.e., Rank).

By the way, here are the men who actually won in those years:

As a Phils fan, I have to love that Richie "The Hack" Hebner was ignored the year that Teddy Sizemore won the award. One can understand why the voters select, say, Willie McCovey, but someone has to explain to me how John Castino got a share of the award in 1979.

If one were to list these overlooked players by year, the result would be, as with the Cy Young, that large numbers of overlooked players occurred when the award was shared between the two leagues (four per year in 1947-48). However, early voting was lackluster at best overall (four overlooked in the AL in 1950 and three in the NL in 1956).

It seems that the new rules were instituted in 1971 because so many questionable candidates were getting the award and so many qualified ones were either overlooked or ineligible. In 1968 Reggie Jackson was completed ignored in favor of Stan Bahnsen, "The Bahnsen Burner", who quickly burned out his arm. (The Senators' Del Unser, later a teammate of Bahnsen in Montreal, was the only other candidate to receive a vote.) From 1968 to 1973 there was one "eligible" rookie that was overlooked but had more Win Shares than the actual award winner (i.e., eligible by my rules).

Since 1973 only three players have been overlooked/ineligible with more Win Shares than the award winner. One was Ford. The other two were Dwayne Murphy (1979) and Craig Biggio (1989) and both played at least 45 games the previous season even though they met the at-bat cutoff. Since 1990 only three players have made the list: Ford, Mike Lansing (1993), and John Rocker (1999). Rocker pitched in 47 games (38 innings) in 1998. In the 1993 NL voting, eleven players received votes (including Pedro Martinez, Carlos Guillen, Jeff Conine, Kirk Rueter, and Ricky Gutierrez) and Mike Piazza swept the first-place votes, but Lansing, then a third baseman with no pop who had not played a major-league game before the season started, was completely ignored.

I decided not to eliminate those players who had appeared in at least 45 games prior to their "rookie" season. They clearly did not pass the experience criterion, but I think it’s the silliest of the three rules. I mean, 130 at-bats and 50 innings pitched are pretty arbitrary numbers (especially for relievers as opposed to starters), but at least they are reasonable. I see no reason why Dwayne Murphy should have been ineligible in 1979 because the A's decided to use him in 60 games in 1978 as defensive replacement in the outfield and pinch-runner. He only had 52 at-bats for the season. I think these rules were outdated before the print dried in 1971.

I understand the need to set up some objective rule to determine rookie eligibility. I just think that Lew Ford, who had all of 73 major-league at-bats entering the 2004 season, shouldn't have to pay for it. I would prefer something closer to though not as stringent as the batting/ERA title eligibility rules. Let's say that a player becomes ineligible once he has accumulated at least 251 plate appearances. That is based on the batting title's 3.1 plate appearances per game and 81 games or half of a season. For pitchers, 81 innings or one per game based on half a season (that is for starting pitchers—relievers would be limited to something like 30 innings). I would eliminate the experience threshold altogether. Who cares how many days a player sat on a major-league bench?

Another alternative would be to keep the current criteria but extend the player's eligibility for another year should he receive no votes in the ROY voting. That would enable players like Ford, who met the criteria but clearly did get enough exposure to merit consideration, to have another chance. Throw 'em back—they're not big enough yet. Maybe the criteria that I outlined would be the ceiling for the players thrown back so that those players who just plain stunk their rookie year don't get another chance the next year.

Anyway, the last entry in this series will be study of how well the voters have done over the years based on Win Shares. I want to look not only at the high-profile cases where Mo Vaughn and Juan Gonzalez stole the MVP from Alex Rodriguez. I want to see how closely all the seedings match reality. For instance, someone has to explain to me how Bobby Abreu finished with three points in this year's NL MVP vote but J.D. Drew had 114 and finished in sixth place. If you say it's because the Braves, and not the Phils, won the NL East (an argument I find silly anyway), then explain to me how fellow Phils Jim Thome finished ahead of Abreu after Abreu had a markedly better season than Thome. It must be those 12 extra home runs (42 for Thome and 30 for Abreu). Then explain to me how Todd Helton and Juan Pierre both ended up with nine votes. Then there are the five points that were all that Melvin Mora received in the AL vote. At least he finished ahead of Chone Figgins. But I digress.

I'd like to look at how closely the voting totals per award reflect reality and how that relationship, or lack thereof, has changed over time.

Sheez, I post a fluff piece to pass off some research on the novelty of Damian Miller playing in Miller Park as an analysis of his career, and people actually hold me to it.

Well, I think the most interesting thing in the Miller signing is how it affects the A's. The Miller signing itself was somewhat ho-hum. I think my quickie analysis showed that Miller was one of the better catchers in baseball basically because of his defense as opposed to his just-average offense.

The one thing I did question was the wisdom of locking up a 35-year-old catcher for three years (though only two guaranteed). So how risky is that, in general?

Since Miller just turned 35 in October, I looked for all of the 34-year-old starting catchers in baseball history (minimum of 80 games behind the plate). Then I tried to determine how effective those catchers would be over the next three years. I averaged the games played and OPS for those players for any years that they were active. I prorated the total Win Shares over three years, even if the player was not active for those years. The reason for this was to determine the player's worth to his team over three years (ergo Win Shares), but the other stats totals only made sense as an average. (Note that Brent Mayne, who was 34 in 2002, and Brad Ausmus and Dan Wilson, who were 34 in 2003, are not penalized for the years that they have yet to play: their Win Shares are averaged over the years yet far that they have been active). Then I took the difference between their Win Share total in their 34th year and compared it to their 35-37 average. I ranked them by the difference:

Of the 64 catchers on the list, just 11 witnessed either an improvement or at least no decline in their Win Share total. A number were fairly recent players, so maybe the trend is becoming less pronounced, but most catchers declined by an average of 5 Win Shares (from 11 to 9 in year one—2 WS—, to 7 in year two—4 WS—, and then to 6 in year three).

More significantly, those catchers played an average of just 82 games, or 25 fewer than in their 34th year, and that ignores those player-years when the players were inactive/retired. If you add in those years, the players averaged just 73 games.

So is three mil a year a bit steep to pay for what amounts to a bad gamble? I would think so, at least for the Brewers where that would constitute about ten percent of their 2004 payroll. Even so, Miller will probably be a major upgrade over the Chad Moeller and Gary Bennett rotation that the Brewers employed last season. The more's the pity.

The Brewers are set to sign Damian Miller to an exorbitant contract (3 years, $8.75 M) apparently so that they can have an on-field Miller ad, as if the stadium signs weren't enough:

"Miller playing at Miller Park was too tough to pass up," Miller's agent Bob Garber said.

On the surface it actually doesn't look like a bad deal. Miller was third in Win Shares among starting catchers last year (min. 81 games at catcher). That is, even though his OPS was 14th among the 25 catchers who qualified and slightly below average for the group. Even so, Miller's per-season salary will be less than average for the group:

Miller is, however, one of the older starting catchers in baseball. He'll be 37 when the contract expires. That's ancient for a catcher, and he doesn't hit enough to play first. And as a catcher ages, he can go from an average hitter to a poor one extremely quickly (witness Charles Johnson, Mike Lieberthal, and Dan Wilson above). I just think it's a poor gamble but those are the kind that the Brewers make.

As for the novelty of Miller playing at Miller Park, it's not the first time a player's last name has appeared in his home park's name (though some are cheating, e.g.,Jim Field?), and I don't mean Arthur 3Com, who never made it out of training camp with the Giants a few years back:

Now, that is the height of triviality.

Parts I, II, III, and IV

Next in our pursuit of the most egregiously overlooked players in baseball award history is the Cy Yoing award.

The Cy Young is not as straight-forward as the MVP vote even though it's only been in existence for just under fifty years. The difficulty arises with a couple of voting rules for the award.

First, when the award was first created (1956) it was for the best pitcher in the major leagues, not in each league as it is today. It wasn't until 1967 that a Cy Young was given out in each league. This allowed a number of candidates to slip through the cracks.

The other eccentricity was that the voters selected just one candidate for the first 15 years of the awards existence. Essentially, it would be like lopping off the second- and third-place votes from today's ballots. Initially, multiple candidates would still split the vote. However, as the mid-Sixties witnessed the domination of Sandy Koufax, fewer candidates were even considered. Koufax was the only man in the majors to receive a vote in 1963, 1965, and 1966. Perhaps that was the reason they split the award up per league: so that an American Leaguer would have a chance. However, in 1968 in both leagues only one candidate received votes (Bob Gibson in the NL and Denny McLain in the AL).

Here's a table of the number of player performance that received Cy Young consideration for each decade in each league. Followed by the average number receiving votes per year per league for the decade (through 2004):

Note the number of candidates quadrupling in the Seventies? The numbers have actually been shrinking in each decade since. But the award will never return to the two-man average that the NL vote in the Seventies achieved. That is, unless they remove third place from the ballot.

This allowed boatloads of deserving candidates to be completely overlooked through the Sixties. In the study below you'll see that there were 12 candidates who would meet our criterion (24 Win Shares) in the National League in 1969 and yet just two (winner Tom Terrific Seaver and Phil Niekro) received any votes. Also, of the 44 overlooked pitchers in the study, only six have been since the ballot was expanded to include second- and third-place votes (and two of them were relievers).

OK, after that rambling preamble, let's off to the actual study. Below are the pitchers who had the best seasons during the Cy Young award era and yet received no notice, or at least no votes (based on a min. of 24 Win Shares. Note Rank is based on WS ranks in the majors for 1956-66 and within league since):

The last entry on the list was the ever-underrated Dave Stieb in 1983. The highest Win Share for an overlooked pitcher since was Tim Hudson's 23 Win Shares in 2002 (15-9, 2.98). I guess the paucity of 20-game winners has allowed voters to focus more on the best performances not just the most wins (John Kruk notwithstanding).

By the way, for the players ranked number one above here are the players who beat them for the award:

Next, we'll look at Rookie of the Year, and that gets very complicated.

Parts I, II, and III

After taking a look at the worst award vote-getters of all time and thoroughly beating the dead horse into the ground while mixing my metaphors, my next pursuit in award voting eccentricities is to determine those players who were the most unjustly overlooked.

Which players were most overlooked for the MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year vote in the years that those awards were handed out? I'm not talking about A-Rod losing to Mo Vaughn or Juan Gonzalez. I mean, who are the guys who received absolutely no support while having great years?

Using Total Win Shares as the criterion, here are the best player years that were totally ignored by the voters. Let’s start first with the MVP award (30 WS min.):

It's not easy being the greatest player to play the game (apologies to Barry Bonds). Ruth's sole MVP award came in 1923, and he did not even receive a vote in four years in which he "led" the league in Win Shares. Rich Lederer reminds me that there was once a rule that barred past MVPs from the award. I'm not sure when that rule was enacted nor when it was reversed, but I would have to expect that Ruth was its main victim.

Below is a list of the players who won the award for the years in which the Win Share leader received no votes:

As for modern players, it seems that Craig Biggio is the new Ruth. At least his lack of votes in 1992 and 1996 was downright Ruthian.

A naked, once-hot Nicolette Sheridan jumps into bad boy Terrell Owens awaiting arms. This comes on the heels of a college player, Pittsburgh quarterback Tyler Palko, saying the Bono/Cheney word in a postgame interview.

Ron Artest and half the Indiana Pacers roster attempt to reenact a game of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" with Bowie's "Panic in Detroit" as the soundtrack in Auburn Hills.

The National Hockey League is still dead. And now they won't even be drafting young players until and unless they have a CBA in place.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, baseball seems reconciled to missing sports sweeps week for scandals. Even with the ongoing Balco investigation belching up a morsel or two every so often, not much interest is being generated. I guess Barry Bonds continuing to amaze after the scandal sort of took the wind out of their sails.

What's happen to the national pastime's ability to offend? Where are the halcyon days of Robbie Alomar spitting in umpire John Hirschbeck's face? These overpaid millionaire players today aren't even trying. A 60-year-old war, as interpreted by Steven Spielberg, can now incite people's enmity more effectively than baseball.

Baseball missed out on all the hand-wringing and blame assessing that make the other sports so popular. Everyone who ever played an NFL game has now apologized for the towel incident. Never mind that the spot was as racy as the intro to "Petticoat Junction" and that a forty-something Sheridan in a towel is no longer Must See TV. Of course, another kind of "raciness" was really what piqued the public's ire especially for a game that was broadcast in good-ole-boy Texas.

As for me, I was offended by ABC's blatant cross-selling of the entertainment division by their sports division. I mean, Fox shuttles the cast of "That Seventies Show" to every sporting event they cover, but they don't make them part of the game (they reserve that for Budweiser's "Leon" and Jimmy Fallon).

I don't want to hear the argument that the cheerleaders are more revealing or that the in-game violence is more offensive. Don't worry: Michael Powell and the FCC is after them, too. We just need the go-ahead from a couple of nuts like the ones that held "Saving Private Ryan" hostage on Veterans Day to stir Powell and his crack squad into action. My mention of "Petticoat Junction" above already has the FCC investigating TV Land.

As for David Stern's outrage over the Artest incident, has he forgotten the Vernon Maxwell incident, which happened on his watch? Yes, Artest's actions were abhorrent, and yes, he should be fined. But shouldn't someone be looking into what was going on with Detroit's security enforcement that night. Did the guards leave the game early to beat traffic? Artest was hit with a Big Gulp of beer after all. He shouldn't have rushed into the crowd, but I didn't see any rent-a-cops tracking down the offending fan. Of course, given what hockey players have done to fans in the past should be remembered when trying to get perspective on the incident. Then again, those guys were white so their actions were not seen as an indictment of the all the players and the sport in general like in Artest's case. Some may argue that it is the SportsCenter affect: Maxwell got just a 10-game suspension while Artest will have to sit out the year (73 games) and in total 143 games will be lost for the players involved.

And I won't even go into why I don't care if a player uses off-color language in the excitement of winning a big game. Isn't it more interesting than another bobblehead thanking his maker?

In baseball, Jose Guillen gets shuttled to the new Nationals because of an on-field incident in Anaheim that would have seemed like a love-in for the crosstown Lakers last season. Barry Bonds endured a season in which threats that his batting records should be removed or asterisked because of steroid allegations and went on to have one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time. And players actually congratulated each other after the Dodgers lost to the Cardinals in the playoffs last year. Tanner Boyle must be rolling over in his wee little grave.

Where's Chad Kreuter when you need him anyway?

Don't know much about a player's history? Don't know much about his biology, er, injury history? Well, if you're a major-league GM, MLB now is providing you with the Cliffs Notes to ensure that you don't overpay.

So if you're Theo Epstein and you need help from the commissioner's office whenever you make a trade or you're Omar Minaya and you got "promoted" to the Mets for despoiling the Expos minor-league system, then this new aid is for you. Who cares if you are a fifty-year-old man who needs training wheels? You want to keep that cushy job at any cost.

Baseball calls it the Free Agent Advice Form. The "Handy Dandy Free Agent Advice Form" was just too long:

So if Scott Boras is bullying you into a 10-year, $200 M contract, all you have to do is write to Dear Abby, er, Buddy. All you need is to send in the player's name (including middle initials for any Bobby Joneses or Javier Lopi) and the contract length desired. You don't even need a self-addressed stamped envelope if you use your fax.

You get "date him"/"drop him" advice with an estimate of the player's value—"[Player's name] value would appear to be between $___ and $ ____". They have to do the math to determine if the figure they have in mind is between those two on their own, however. Then you get a list of "relevant comparables", however they might be determined, with their contract info. And if all that's not enough for our junior GM to arrive at a decision, you also receive at no extra cost a list of "Other Factors" such as age, injury history, etc. Ron Popeil would be proud. And if you act today, you get the Veg-O-Matic, a $50 value, absolutely free.

Why can't Eddie Wade read? Because daddy Bud does his homework for him.

But why come up with the form now after two offseasons in which accusations have been swirling? That's precisely the reason to come up with this form according to Jayson Stark. The paper trail will now act as a form of CYA (Cover Your Assets) for MLB. The thinking is that since everything will be out in the open—the players union has access to the forms—and fully documented, then MLB's obvious innocence from collusion will be apparent to all.

MLB Corporate wea..,er, labor-relations chief Rob Manfred basically says as much to Stark, "Our position is that nothing untoward has gone on. The union has been concerned about this, so we were prepared to do something to address their concerns." Whether anything toward has transpired was not addressed.

And if that's not enough, the Handy Dandy Form comes with keano whizbang disclaimers:

"Obviously the value of a free agent Player is ultimately determined by market forces, the most fundamental of which are supply of such Players and the demand for those Players. Moreover, the potential value of a free agent Player to one Club may be different from the same Player's value to another Club. Given this, the amount that your Club is willing to pay a free agent may appropriately differ from the value range supplied above…

"Moreover, this advice is strictly advisory and is intended to assist you in formulating contract offers that you deem appropriate. As has always been the case, advice from the Office of the Commissioner cannot interfere with a Club's obligation to act in its own individual interest in a free market. In fact, you are required to act in your individual interest in deciding what contract terms to offer a free agent player."

"Wink wink. Nudge nudge, say no more, say no more." If it's all so obvious, why include it on a one-page form? Because everyone needs a little legalese to indemnify oneself. Beware of forms bearing regular nouns in capital letters. Do You know what i mean? Where else is the word "Moreover" used except in documents drawn up by lawyers.

Of course, there's no collusion since the teams are "not permitted to share this advice" or that they even received advice via the Handy Dandy Form "with another Club"—note the caps: it's legalese. And of course the commissioner's office "will not disclose to any other Club [caps again] the fact that [they] provided this advice." That is, they won't any longer now that Bud's Brewers are being sold.

To quote Hildy and Buffy, "See, it's all perfectly normal."

Stark also refers to a Manfred-penned negotiating memo that MLB circulated to all the teams that prohibits clubs from "discuss[ing] negotiations, contract offers or even 'contemplated' offers with each other" this may include "using the media to circulate information about their contract offers to free agents". It also reiterates that the contract advice is only "upon a specific request from a club" and only on the top-secret advice form, and points out that teams are "not required to seek such advice" nor bound to follow it.

Moreover, it goes on to say that Happy Fun Ball should not be used as a flotation devise.

I see these moves as having three ultimate goals. First and foremost, to protect MLB against any sort of collusion settlement that was seen after the 1986-88 seasons. At least, they're more creative today than in Peter Ueberroth's days.

Second, they want to make sure that regular business, including reining in maverick teams who are doling out Amigo money on free agent contracts, is maintained.

Third, this was a wakeup call to the teams who rubberstamped the advice in the past and offered remarkably similar contracts to similar players. No good confidence game can be run when you have thirty partners who are such boobs.

I, frankly, dismissed the claims by players and agents that collusion was afoot in the past couple off seasons. I thought that the players unwisely signed an extremely lopsided Collective Bargaining Agreement that came with built-in "collusion", a soft salary cap, to which every team has adhered since (except the Yankees). So I disregarded the cries of collusion just like I dismissed the cries of fraud in the past presidential election. Of course, things happened, but you were a party to them. Besides, insurance companies no longer were covering the long-term contracts (over three years) that they had in the past further reducing contract length and thereby, releasing more players more quickly back in the free agent pool increasing supply and reducing demand.

However, methinks Bud dost protest too much this offseason. Going by the "where there's smoke, there's fire" theory, there is something as real at least as the last round of collusion afoot here. Manfred is blowing a whole lot of smoke up too many orifices for there not to be some fire down below. There has been too little salary growth since the last CBA was signed. Apparently, the owners got lazy (not coordinating offers more realistically) and greedy (ticking off too many and suppressing salaries too much). Rob "The Wolf" Manfred now must clean up their mess. Excuse him if he's curt.

The problem is that without an Andre Dawson-like lightning rod for the collusion zeitgeist, the charges may be hard to prove in the courts and in the ever-important court of public opinion, where all players are considered overpaid but no owner's salary is ever evaluated. And now the lawyers are swooping in for plausible deniability. The players may be better served by trying to gear up for the next CBA negotiations, an effort that may be better served with some changes at the top of the union.

Parts I and II

Next in our pursuit of the worst award vote-getters of all time are the Charboneaus, the worst Rookie of the Year candidates, or at least the ones that someone was foolish enough to vote for. Of course, it is named for Joe Charboneau, the Cleveland Indians slugger who set the bar for sophomore slumps.

Here are the worst ROY candidates by career Win Shares. You'll notice that this year's batch gets short shrift: everyone but Jason Bay and Khalil Greene is on the list:

Shooty Babitt was a 22-year-old, sub-par fielding and hitting second baseman who bridged the Dave McKay and Davey Lopes eras in Oakland. He played in 52 of the A's 109 games that strike-shortened year, but yielded to McKay for the postseason, was not even apparently on the postseason roster, and never played in the majors again. He did have a great nickname though. Shooty is now a scout, I believe, in the D-Backs organization.

Now for the single-season leaders:

Buck is the only 2004 player on the list. George Bell took a couple of years, but you'll probably remember was a great player for a time. You have to love that the Benes brothers ended up right next to each other.

I'm actually more encouraged by this list than the career list. There are a number of players who must have shown flashes of if not greatness at least goodness even though their overall performance may not have been overwhelming. I;m talking about guys who became productive major-leagues like Bell, Javy Lopez, Jermaine Dye, Bob Ojeda, Bob Walk, Andy Benes, Floyd Bannister, Dick Groat, Juan Pierre, Sidney Ponson, and Nelson Liriano. There is also a good bit of the Brian Williams-Bud Smith variety of player, but someone got it right when he picked those guys.

The Buddies

The Buddy is named for Buddy Bell, who had one winning record in parts of six seasons as a manager, but always seemed to get decent support in the Manager of the Year award.

Win Shares don't really apply here. Let's try something new. First, let's look at the worst record for a manager who garnered at least a point in the MOY vote:

Someone felt bad for Trammell, Wedge, and Piniella last year. Somehow Mike Hargrove amassed more points in 1993 than 1992 after finishing with the exact same sub-.500 record as the year before.

Next are the worst career records for a MOY candidate:

And just for good measure, here are the managers who received some consideration even though their team's record was worse (or at the same) as the previous year: