A crowded Hall of Fame ballot means a tough time for many worthy candidates. So why reward some of these vote-getters first?
I had resisted writing this for a while… because for a while, it didn’t seem to matter. But now I think it does, and that’s wrong. And it impacts some former Atlanta Braves‘ favorites.
Ryan Thibodaux provides a wonderful service for Hall watchers – a spreadsheet that tracks all official Hall of Fame ballots that have been released for public viewing.
His tracker can be viewed at this link. But there are some trends in this year’s voting that frankly seem a bit disturbing, and that’s the subject of this rant.
Defining the Terms
Let me first remind you of the rules of engagement for voters.
Those to be enshrined will have 75%-or-better nods on all ballots returns… roughly 327 of the estimated 435 ballots for this year. If you’re honored to be on the ballot, you will have up to 10 years of voting to get that 75%, though any failure in any year to reach 5% and you’re done.
Right away, that’s one reform I’d like to see done: if you reach something like 10% during the any year of balloting, you get to stay for the full 10 years
Another reform I’d like to see gets to the heart of the problem I’m seeing now: that limit of 10 selections on any single ballot. The first 106 ballots shown on Ryan’s spreadsheet are averaging 8.9 player vote apiece. That means many voters are having to make choices as to who gets omitted.
Jayson Stark noted that the average was 8.39 in 2014 and 8.42 in 2015. He also noted that a 2015 proposal to raise the limit from 10 to 12 was rejected.
“At some point, there has to be a line drawn,” said a board member of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).
I’m sorry… but why is that the case? That line could be “everyone on the ballot”, but nobody will do that.
Frankly, with a strict 75% threshold for acceptance, there is no good reason for restricting voters from casting their choices without limit. That 75% line is the one already drawn thickly across the history of the process. That serves as your limiting factor.
So instead… we have choices.
Some may be choosing to leave a player out because he’s “less worthy” than another. Some are selecting players because it’s their last shot. Whatever the reason, choices are being made.
That’s just not right. If you’re a worthy Hall of Fame player, nothing so trifling as a balloting limitation should keep you out.
Yet that might actually happen.
This Year’s Problem
Here are the names on the ballot this time ’round (19 of them of 34 total) that have already received votes. It’s a pretty solid group:
- Jeff Bagwell
- Barry Bonds
- Roger Clemens
- Vladimir Guerrero
- Trevor Hoffman
- Jeff Kent
- Edgar Martinez
- Fred McGriff
- Mike Mussina
- Jorge Posada
- Tim Raines
- Manny Ramirez
- Ivan Rodriguez
- Curt Schilling
- Gary Sheffield
- Lee Smith
- Sammy Sosa
- Billy Wagner
- Larry Walker
But while you’re mulling the idea of whether more HOF enshrinees is a good thing, don’t forget that baseball has expanded dramatically since 1960:
- 1961 – 2 teams added
- 1962 – 2 more teams added
- 1969 – 4 teams added
- 1977 – 2 teams
- 1993 – 2 teams
- 1998 – final 2 teams to date
We are now at 30 MLB teams. We had just 16 in 1960.
Should there be more Hall of Famers in this era? Yeah – close to twice as many just based on the raw number of players.
You could argue that it should not be a full doubling of the past HOF rate due to the dilution of talent. Understandable perhaps, but it’s still very much likely that as the available roster slots expanded, the opportunities for players to excel likewise increased… and that’s not even counting the DH era and that whole controversy.
Of course, I’d also argue that baseball has substantially increased the pool of talent in the past few decades as well: from the color barrier breach in 1947 to the expansion of players from Latin America, Korea, and Japan. Thus as the leagues have expanded, the talent pool certainly has as well.
Yet the vote limit is 10… and it remains at ten.
The Voting… and the Problem
Ballot results known to date show the following:
- Tim Raines 90.9% (finally! And this is his last shot)
- Jeff Bagwell 92.7%
- Ivan Rodriguez 83.6%
- Vladimir Guerrero 76.4%
- Trevor Hoffman 74.5% (Why is this so hard? MLB named a danged award after him)
- Barry Bonds 70%
- Roger Clemens 70%
- Edgar Martinez 66.4%
- Mike Mussina 59.1%
- Curt Schilling 51.8%
That’s everyone over 50% so far. Ten names.
But there are certainly some names that should be doing a lot better. Here are four… 3 of whom once wore Atlanta Braves colors:
- Fred McGriff 13.6%
- Larry Walker 22.7%
- Billy Wagner 11.8%
- Gary Sheffield 11.8%
But there are two names on that first list that are getting a lot of love this season: Barry Bonds has leaped up from 44.3% in 2016 to 70% now (so far). Roger Clemens’ jump has gone from 45.2% to 70% (virtually the same people are voting for both).
For both of these players, it’s their 4th time on the ballot. However, some of these others are running out of time.
Should BBWAA members be rewarding Bonds and Clemens with votes? Before voting for some of these others having trouble getting recognition?
The Rant Ensues
Here’s where my personal opinion now jumps up and complains.
One can argue that neither Bonds nor Clemens have ever been known to fail a test for a banned substance. For Bonds, that argument would actually be incorrect – based on tests and testimony. For Clemens, he did everything legally possible to try and discredit testimony and other evidence against him on the subject… including suggestions that nothing he did was banned at the time.
To date, this pair still represent the featured poster figures for Baseball’s Steroid Era.
Opinion: to put either into the Hall of Fame would be an overt message that this brand of cheating is not only okay, but – given enough passage of time – will probably result in the ultimate honor for participants in your sport.
In other words: the cheating worked.
Meanwhile… with those names still on the ballot and voters paying them homage, others are left out.
Are there other ill-doers on that ballot? Maybe. It is indeed hard to say in so many cases. But if you look at this pair – Bonds and Clemens – and believe they are clean because they weren’t caught on video with a syringe sticking out of their hips, then I really can’t help you.
Meanwhile: Would McGriff, Sheffield, Wags, and Walker be shoo-ins in the absence of those others? No – probably not. They are borderline cases. But they aren’t 20%-ers either. I’d at least like to see them have a fair chance.
The same thing applies to Alan Trammell, who fell off the ballot after 15 years of trying (one of the last ‘grandfathered’ in with 15-year eligibility). His production, durability, and defense certainly could have been rewarded.
But Trammell had the 11th highest vote total in 2016. Clemens and Bonds were 7th and 8th respectively.
What To Do
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The BBWAA has a couple of choices, in my view:
- Expand the votes permitted. Make it unlimited.
- Lower the acceptance threshold to 67%. This accounts for writers who hadn’t routinely seen some of the players they might be voting on – necessary for full research, but difficult to do.
- Have a ‘meeting of the minds’ about certain players and how to handle them.
- Or do nothing and preserve a flawed status quo.
Here’s a bizarre twist to this tale: Curt Schilling is likely to be excluded again this year for what seems to be opinions about his politics and ability to control his speech.
So pray tell me… which is worse: uttering unpopular opinions after your playing days are over, or shooting yourself up with drugs intended to gain an unfair advantage over opponents during your playing days?
I’ll tell you what Major League Baseball and the MLB Players’ Union think. Do that stuff now, and your playing career has a real chance of being destroyed by suspensions. MLB has the toughest drug policy in the game.
But at this 70% mark, the writers seem willing – in due course – to sweep a bad history under the rug. To reward bad behavior and punish (via omission) some of the good guys.
Regardless of how you answer that last question or how you feel about the steroid era in general, one thing is clear: the good guys are losing this battle. That’s not right.