The Hall of Fame Gets Two More Members, Fun With Morrow, and Other Bullets

Elf on the Shelf is a sentence parents impose on themselves, but I guess the kids like it enough to justify the frantic scrambling at midnight (“Oh crap, I forgot to set up the elf again!”).

  • The newest members of the Hall of Fame have been voted in by the Modern Era Committee, designed to bring in deserving players and executives and anyone else who was not previously voted in:
  • Marvin Miller continues to be excluded without explanation, and that is ridiculous. But setting that aside, congrats to Trammell and Morris, even if the latter is an almost perfect example of a “Hall of Very Good” type player, hence why he was never voted in for so long. Morris’ career 3.90 ERA was 5% better than average during his career. Ditto his career 3.94 FIP. He pitched a very long time (parts of 18 seasons), and was very durable (3824.0 career innings). There’s a ton of value there. But is that Hall worthy? Or is everyone just remembering that one World Series start too fondly?
  • I’m a “big Hall” guy, so whatever, but it’s pretty aggravating to see marginal candidates get love while clearly-deserving candidates are annually spurned because of a steroid epidemic that the league borderline encouraged, and that no one can precisely pin down to who did what.
  • Speaking of which, I have no doubt that he got so little support because he played in the Steroid Era and because there were fierce debates about just how good he was defensively, but can I say again that it’s insane that Jim Edmonds never even got serious consideration for the Hall:
  • Even in the offense-inflated era, an excellent defensive center fielder was one of the best seven *OFFENSIVE* players in that era. Not only should Edmonds not have fallen off the ballot, but if guys like Trammell and Morris are Hall-of-Fame-worthy, then clearly Edmonds is a Hall of Famer.
  • (No, this is not all just because Edmonds hit .256/.369/.568 in his half-season with the Cubs in 2008. But that doesn’t hurt.)
  • Fun with the Cubs’ new reliever:
  • Also, Morrow is clearly better than Clayton Kershaw:
  • Cubs outfield prospect John Andreoli is now former Cubs outfield prospect John Andreoli – he’s reportedly signed a minor league deal with the Mariners. Good luck to him. That bat and that speed still might play as a 4th/5th outfielder type.
  • Big news in Boston for the Red Sox’s rotation, but also – less crassly, for peoples’ lives:
  • Hopefully that situation gets the appropriate care it needs. As for the Red Sox (we are a baseball site, after all), they may now need to be a little more aggressive in the pitching market, with Eduardo Rodriguez (knee surgery) and Wright both having unclear statuses for early next year.
  • Wow. That’s a pretty incredible show of commitment:
  • If you missed anything from the VERY busy weekend, catch yourself up here.
  • Today’s day of deals at Amazon is all for techies.
  • The Cubs Shop is 30% off all orders of $30 today, so you’ll definitely want to get on that:
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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