When Major League Baseball announced its "Franchise Four" campaign, I mostly yawned.
For one thing, Franchise Four sounds like the unholy bastard child of the hoary old Mt. Rushmore theme and the Yankees' pretentious Core Four apellation. For another, the whole point of the campaign isn't to write any history, but rather to collect as many e-mail addresses of unwary voters as possible. Which is to say: Marketing!
Hey, business is business.
The other thing is that you're not allowed to complain about the voters' choices.
I mean, you can do whatever you want. But MLB's not asking anyone to choose the four best players from each franchise.
Actually, it's a little hazy; depends on which page you're looking at. But the landing page for the campaign says this:
Vote for the FOUR most impactful players who best represent the history of each franchise.
Well, "impactful" means whatever you want it to mean. If a Phillies fan wants to argue for Tug McGraw, who are we to argue? For that fan, maybe Tug McGraw really was the fourth-most impactful player in franchise history.
That said, we've got the first round of voting results, and I don't see a great deal to argue with, whatever your definition. That page doesn't list all the results, but I do have them in a press release. So you'll just have to trust me. I thought the results would include a significant "recency bias" ... but Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are not among the Yankees' top four, Joe Mauer's not among the Twins' top four, Jose Bautista's not among the Jays' top four, etc. Ron Santo beats out Sammy Sosa, Duke Snider beats out Clayton Kershaw.
Sure, there's some recency bias. Buster Posey's ahead of Juan Marichal, Omar Vizquel's ahead of Nap Lajoie, etc.
Vox populi. If you hate some of these preliminary results, vote to change 'em! http://t.co/P58qgJhiEN
— John Thorn (@thorn_john) April 22, 2015
Well, here's we might complain just a little. Because in addition to choosing Franchise Fours, we're also permitted to vote for "Greatest Living Players," "Negro Leaguers" and "Pioneers (Pre-1915)."
And it's in the latter category where both MLB and the voters are wildly off the mark. The leading "pioneers"? Grover Alexander, George Sisler, Cap Anson, and Wee Willie Keeler ... even though both Alexander and (especially) Sisler did most of their work after 1915. The other four nominees are Buck Ewing, King Kelly, Kid Nichols, and George Wright. Which makes it pretty clear that the voters are simply going for the guys they've actually heard of. Which isn't surprising, but does make one question the point of the exercise.
