Colorado Rockies podcast: Hall of Fame talk, positives of 2021, and player connectedness

The Baseball Hall of Fame will be welcoming in at least six new Hall of Famers this year as Bud Fowler, Buck O’Neil, Jim Kaat, Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso, and Tony Oliva were all inducted as Hall of Famers on Sunday after the “Early Baseball Committee” inducted the former two and the “Golden Days Era Committee” inducted the latter four. In 2021, there were no official inductees but the 2020 inductees, including former Colorado Rockies outfielder Larry Walker, made their Hall of Fame speeches in 2021.

On this episode of the Rox Pile Rockies Report, my co-expert, Kevin Henry, and I are joined by DNVR’s Patrick Lyons to talk about the Hall of Fame voting, including some changes we’d make with the voting process and some of the future outlook on ballots for committees and the regular BBWAA voting.

We also discuss some of the positives for the Colorado Rockies in 2021.

The Colorado Rockies were not a good team in 2021 but they have a few positive things come out of the season. We talk about some of them in our podcast, including the emergence of Lucas Gilbreath in the Rockies bullpen and Connor Joe overcoming cancer and playing well for the Rockies.

We also tie the two things together with a look at Baseball-Reference’s “Oracle of Baseball,” where you can see if any players are connected to each other through history. One current Rockie is only two degrees of separation between one of the newest members of the Hall of Fame, despite being born eight years after the Hall of Famer last played.

One connection that we didn’t mention was Rockies manager Bud Black. He is just one degree of separation from the new Hall of Famer Minnie Miñoso, as Black played with Thad Bosley on the 1988 Royals and he played with Miñoso on the 1980 White Sox.

In the coming days and weeks during the lockout, we will continue to have daily content here on Rox Pile and a podcast roughly once a week as there will still be plenty happening (including BBWAA Hall of Fame voting) coming soon.

You can check out the podcast above or wherever you download your podcasts.