[uruguru]

Setting: historical season starting in 1931

At the end of the season, I want to start up the Hall of Fame. I assume that the first year or two, the nominated class will be large as a lot of the early greats get in (Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, etc). I want this to be a "small hall" so I set the voting threshold to 90%.

I encounter several "problems"

First problem: if I use the standard "wait 5 years after retirement, then you are eligible for 10 years", then any historical player who has been retired for more than 15 years is NOT on the ballot, even though this is technically the first possible ballot for them to be on. Changing the "Years on Ballot" to "unlimited" allows the older players on the ballot, but then of course you might not want them to be on for more than 10 years. MINOR PROBLEM

Second problem: Cy Young... a first-ballot HOF'er if there ever was one. However, if you leave the "Maximum Votes per Ballot" to the default value of 10, then Cy Young gets zero votes. ZERO. But if you raise the maximum votes to 20, he gets in first-ballot with 92.2% of the vote. This is repeatable and makes no sense. MEDIUM PROBLEM. If you leave this value at 20, it doesn't take long before even marginal HOF'ers (e.g. Charlie Buffinton) will get the 90% -- which defeats the point of the 90%.

Third problem: Cap Anson (see image). I just don't know how to explain how the AI is rubber-banding on this guy with 3400 career hits, 2000 RBI & runs, and 85 Career WAR. It doesn't bother me that it took him 4 years to get in, but these were his vote totals: 6.6% -> 87.4% -> 9.4% -> 94.5%

Any ideas why these things are happening?