ESPN fires blog for pro-Bagwell sentiments

ESPN's sweetspot network just fired the Platoon Advantage over its series of Plagiarism articles.

ESPN has always been particularly sensitive to media criticism, and our ongoing series of posts regarding Jeff Bagwell and the Hall of Fame were sort of the last straw for the editors, who pulled the plug on us. 


Today is the day Bagwell gets another snub and likely the year Barry Larkin gets enshrined. And MLB.com's writers let their ballots be known today, with the two most ridiculous coming from Mark Newman and Tom Singer.

Firstly Newman:

Morris made a record 14 consecutive Opening Day starts, and the 300-win benchmark is already dropping. He got my vote for the first time. Smith should have gone in already with Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter. Big Mac brought back baseball. Larkin was an 11-time All-Star, 'nuff said.

Nuff said? Opening day starts might be the dumbest criterion I've seen in a while. He votes for Mark McGwire for 'bringing back baseball' yet offers no explanation on Bagwell.

Singer meanwhile:

Aside on Bagwell: For me, he flunks the "dominant in his era" test; at a corner position, he only led the league in a major category once (RBIs, with 116 in 1994).

Buh. And he voted for Palmeiro, Morris, Lee Smith, Trammell and Edgar Martinez. This argument is so much more applicable to all these players than Bagwell. Not only did he put up a .970 OPS in his first 10 seasons, he averaged 6.5 bWAR over that period per season. So offensively he wasn't Barry Bonds or Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez, but Singer just misunderstands what kind of player Bagwell actually was.

Check out Brian McTaggart's piece from this morning.