Here is your 2015 ballot. Who do you vote for?
And geez, isn’t this a stacked ballot? You could make one hell of a team from this list.
After some-but-not-much deliberation:
R. Johnson
P. Martinez
J. Smoltz
C. Biggio
M. Piazza
J. Bagwell
T. Raines
E. Martinez
A. Trammell
L. Walker
I’ve got nothing against steroid era-hitters, as long as they excelled relative to their contemporaries. I’ve actually got nothing against the convicted users, either; it was just too easy to fill a ballot without needing any of their names.
Also sufficiently qualified that I would vote them in if I had space:
R. Clemens
B. Bonds
M. Mussina
C. Schilling The Terrible Human Being
Worth arguing about:
G. Sheffield (probably yes)
M. McGwire (probably yes)
J. Kent (probably no)
S. Sosa (probably no)
Johnson
Martinez
Schilling (A fine Human Being)
Mattingly
Johnson
Smoltz
Smith
Trammel
Again we get to see how badly the BBWAA have botched the last few HoF elections. Utterly ridiculous that there are this many names on the ballot. Sigh.
I am keeping in the known steroid users. Accordingly, my first ones are: Bonds and Clemens. Others not known to have used that are on my cannot cut list are: Pedro, Randy Johnson, Bagwell. That leaves five. I am using two of them to get Raines and Trammell in, who are deserving and should have been voted in long before. Then Christ, how do you pick the next three from a pool of: Biggio, Mussina, Schilling, Edgar, Kent, Sosa, Piazza, Smoltz, McGwire, McGriff, Walker?
(Aside, man did I not realize how highly BBRef thinks of Brian Giles. 50.9 WAR?)
Pfft. Let’s go, Biggio, Walker, Edgar. For now, anyway. Ask me in a week and I’ll probably pick three other names from that pool.
So: Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Johnson, Edgar, Pedro, Raines, Trammell, Walker. What a mess.
I had no trouble coming up with nine:
Three new guys, all pitchers and all highly deserving in my book:
Smoltz
R. Johnson
P. Martinez
Three recent holdovers who I think (and hope) will be elected soon:
Bagwell
Biggio
Piazza
Three guys who probably won’t be elected, but I firmly believe they deserve induction:
Trammell
Walker
Raines
There are several I could easily accept as a tenth, but none that I feel called to vote for the way I did the nine above.
(I have never supported the candidacies of the “known” PED guys, and I do recognize that this stance is viewed by many to be wrongheaded and very possibly inconsistent. And that could be right, and at some point I may change my mind. But I find I’m not ready to do that with regard to Clemens and Bonds, who otherwise would clearly be in, or McGwire, who (non-steroidally speaking) has a stronger case than a lot of people think.)
A lot of people complain about the BBWAA and its high, perhaps too-high standards these days. But I think a lot of fans aren’t bothered by their choosiness at all. I’m pretty sure that last year when we did this we didn’t “elect” any more players than the writers did. I doubt we do this time either. I know I’ve been told by some very angry fans that it’s a shame and disgrace that Curt Schilling, for example, was not elected last year. Whaddaya mean he’s not in the Hall of Fame??? Well, it’s early days yet in our voting, but at the moment Schilling is sailing along with less than 25% of the vote. It’s not clear to me that if we gave the vote to entities other than the BBWAA that the outcome would be much different.
Voted for 10, wanted 13 or 14. #2010sBBWAAproblems
Johnson
Martinez
Smoltz
Biggio
Bagwell
Trammel
Bonds
Clemens
Piazza
Raines
The split over the PED users is clearly going to continue to be a factor, and there are a bunch of borderline choices that i might have included in any other year.
While there’s always going to be disagreement about things like PEDs, and about borderline cases, some players just feel like absolute musts, and in that vein i must admit that i’m astounded that ten percent of our voters so far have declined to select Pedro Martinez.
Sosa. How can a guy hit 60 HRs in three different seasons and not be in the Hall. That’s what the Hall is for. Rose and Jackson, too. The Hall is to inform future generations who the great players were. That’s how I know about Speaker and Simmons and Wheat and Grimes. Nobody cares if Santa put coal in their stockings.
The Commissioner has no authority to ban anybody from the Hall of Fame. The Hall is an independent entity (or used to be) with the authority to make is own rules, and has a competent selection committee to decide who is worthy, irrespective of what any Commissioner thinks. The commissioner is a puppet of billionaire club owners who use ballplayes to enrich themselves – nothing more… Make everybody eligible, and let the Hall vote.
My take on Bonds. Yes he took PEDs but in an era where other batters and some pitchers were also juicing he dominated the league by far. The game changes so much from era to era that HoFamers should be relative to their contemporaries and on those terms there is no reason to keep Bonds out.
For jtur88. It is the BBWAA that made the rule to keep banned players out. Of course they are hypocrites themselves and have all of these unwritten rules determining their votes that it is hard to take any decision they make seriously.
To make a reasonable argument against that; for the same reason George Sisler is a borderline HoF choice even though he batted .400 twice; because hitting an arbitrary statistical barrier isn’t enough.
Leaving aside PEDs, consider this; Sosa hit 60 homers three times and did not lead the league in home runs in any of those years. He hit a lot of home runs at a time people were hitting home runs at ridiculous paces. Sosa has one home run title, which is fewer than Dave Kingman.
It’s not that Sammy wasn’t a great player, he was, but was he really better than Tim Raines, if you account for one guy playing in the 80s and one in home run heaven? Was he really a better player than Larry Walker? His career WAR was about 58-60, depending on what source you believe - which is very, very good, but it’s not the top of this class. I can see having ten people in front of him on a ballot.
And yet you know about Shoeless Joe Jackson, who isn’t in the Hall and never, ever should be.
I picked:
R. Johnson
P. Martinez
J. Smoltz
F. McGriff
B. Bonds
C. Biggio
M. Piazza
M. McGwire
And I thought I voted for Clemens, but apparently screwed the pooch.
My 10: Johnson, PMartinez, Smoltz, Biggio, Piazza, Bagwell, Raines, Clemens, Bonds, EMartinez (pretty much a standard SABR/JAWS/etc. ballot, with a slight personal bias for Edgar). As of this post, only Pedro and Randy are getting in, with Smoltz and Piazza missing by one vote.
If you had a “standard SABR/JAWS/etc. ballot”, then Mussina would be ahead of Smoltz.
I’ve given up on being the steroid police, so Big Unit, Pedro, Biggio, Piazza, Raines, Clemens, Bonds, Edgar, Schilling and Mussina.
I’d put Schilling ahead of Smoltz too, which pains me because saying anything even remotely positive about that gaping asshole is painful.
Touché, although I’ll just pretend that I meant to also include Smoltz over Mussina in the “pretty much” category. 
In actuality, it was my overestimating Smoltz combined with my confusing Mussina with Andy Pettitte and penalizing Mussina for PED usage. :smack:
I’m also not strictly anti-steriod, but since there are 10 easy candidates before getting to Bonds and Clemens, I left them off.
Big Unit
Pedro
Biggio
Bagwell
Piazza
Walker
Trammell
Edgar
Mussina
Raines
Smoltz is probably deserving; I think Jeff Kent has a case as well. I’d vote for Rich Aurilia before I’d vote for Schilling.
How about hitting the “arbitrary” statistic of .340 lifetime – exactly the same as Gehrig.? Sisler was regarded as one of he best defensive first basemen ever, and Gehrig one of he worst. Both were inducted by people who saw them play, and both were no-doubters.
If you think George Sisler’s glove made up for Gehrig’s ridiculously superior bat, well, you can take Sisler, but that’s not the point; the point is that assigning HOF worthiness to a single stat is unwise. Bill Dinneen had more 20-win seasons than Greg Maddux, and once pitched 39 complete games in ONE YEAR, but I think you will agree that accomplishment is very different in 1902 than it would be today.
I think a more relevant question remains this; is Sammy Sosa the best player eligible for the Hall of Fame but not yet in? Jeez, I don’t think he’s even close to that.
You think BBWAA is bad? Somehow we have 3 voters that don’t think Randy Johnson is a HoFer and 8 that didn’t vote for Pedro? How is that even possible?
I filled in the full 10 (although I guess we weren’t really limited in this poll), leaving off Walker, Schilling, and Edgar (all of whom I could probably be talked in to).
So: Unit, Pedro, Smoltz, Biggio, Bagwell, Piazza, Raines, Trammell, Clemens, Bonds.
As to my opinions:
Randy Johnson - Who the hell didn’t vote for him? Already three people have left him off their ballots. Randy Johnson is easily one of the ten greatest pitchers in the history of the sport.
Pedro Martinez - As great as the Big Unit, except way less durable. A worthy selection.
John Smoltz - I am intrigued by the fact that so far Smoltz seems to be a consensus pick, but Mike Mussina isn’t. If you can show me why Mike Mussina was a worse pitcher than Smoltz, I’d be intrigued to see that argument. Mussina was by mot analytics a much better pitcher; Smoltz had a tremendous playoff career and the cool starter-to-reliever-to-starter thing and I do think he’s a Hall of Famer, but why not Mussina, too?
Carlos Delgado - As a Blue Jay fan I’d love to elect Carlos Delgado to the Hall of Fame but he was not that good.
Actually, Carlos is a good argument against Saint Cad’s “Sammy hit 60 homers 3 times, ergo should be in the Hall” argument, in that Carlos is an example of how inflated hitting numbers were then. His stats are superficially BETTER than many Hall of Famers. Delgado’s career numbers look just like Willie Stargell’s, but nobody would seriously say Delgado was the equal of Willie Stargell because they know there’s a difference between hitting 44 home runs in 1973, when the average team in the league hit maybe 130 homers, and doing it in the 1999 American League when the average team hit 195 home runs. Delgado wasn’t the Willie Stargell of his time, he was the Willie Horton of this time.
Gary Sheffield – Huge asshole; wow, there’s a lot of assholes on this ballot. HOF-level hitter, Sheffield is penalized by WAR as being the worst defensive player you could imagine. He wasn’t a glove man but I don’t think he was THAT bad. On the fence about him anyway; again, he played in the era of many homers.
**Nomar Garciaparra **– The Don Mattingly of shortstops. Hell of a player for five years or so.
**Troy Percival **– In his entire career Troy Percival pitcher a total of 708 innings. If he’d never given up a single run he’d be a borderline case at best.
Rich Aurilia – No.
Aaron Boone – I’m kind of surprised Boone is on the ballot, because I thought the standard was you had to be an MLB regular for ten years and you really have to squint and be generous in your thinking to give Boone credit for that, but whatever. He hit a famous home run.
Tony Clark – I honestly don’t remember a thing about Tony Clark except he was really tall and hit some home runs. Has there ever been a position player who was taller? I’m not sure.
Jermaine Dye – Meh.
Darin Erstad – Erstad looked like the absolute shiznit for awhile; his 2000 season was a monster. Then the next season he sucked, and then a few years later he was hurt, I guess, and he kind of faded away. Exhibit #3,000 that players usually fall apart early.
Cliff Floyd – Floyd was a hell of a talented hitter but got hurt a lot.
Brian Giles – Giles was a terrific player on bad teams, but his peak wasn’t good enough (his WAR tops out around 6.5) and his career wasn’t long enough.
Again, look at the striking effect of the hitting boon in the 90s/00s. In 1999 Giles went .315/.432/.594 for the Pirates – and gets 6.6 WAR and just barely made the MVP ballot, which was appropriate. In 2013 Andrew McCutchen went .317/.404/.508 for the same team, numbers superficially inferior in every respect, and he won the MVP Award, and he deserved to.
Tom “Flash” Gordon – The greatest player in the history of baseball whose name is in the title of a Stephen King novel.
Everyday Eddie Guardado – I had to put his nickname into the poll because there just aren’t enough good nicknames anymore. In spite of his nickname he actually only led the league in games pitched once.
Jason Schmidt – The second-greatest player in baseball history whose name is “Schmidt.”
According to WAR, Jason Schmidt’s career was worth about thirty percent of Mike Schmidt’s. Suppose they played at the same time; would you trade Mike Schmidt for four Jason Schmidts? I don’t think I would. Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way, but it seems to me that ever though four Jason Schmidts are technically worth about as much as one Mike Schmidt, WAR does not account for the opportunity cost of a roster spot; your four Jason Schmidts leave you with only 21 other players to win the pennant, whereas your one Mike Schmidt gives you 24 other roster sports. Of course if you also had George Brett and had no good pitchers…
Craig Biggio – Should be in the Hall of Fame, and he might or might not make it this year. The weight of the ballot and the fact Randy Johnson and Pedro are deservedly jumping over Biggio might push him back another year. We’ll see.
**Mike Piazza **– Pretty obvious Hall of Famer, and will get in eventually. When he does maybe Roger Clemens can come to the ceremony and throw a bat at him.
**Jeff Bagwell **– All the metrics say he should be in. I think his candidacy suffers to some extent from PED whispers but to a greater extent from the fact that there’s a lot of players like Jeff Bagwell who played at the same time. “First baseman with some huge batting numbers” is a very crowded group in the 1990s and early 2000s, and at a quick glance it’s not obvious to the less savvy baseball writer what the difference is between Jeff Bagwell and, say, Carlos Delgado.
Tim Raines – A deserving candidate whose career in unfortunately being lost in the shuffle. I am not sure he’s top ten on this ballot, and fair is fair.
I remember when it was a big deal that Tim Raines and a bunch of other players were doing coke. I wonder if anyone cares about that anymore; what a stupid, self-immolating scandal that was. If some guy wants to snort his career up his nose, let him. He’ll decline and some other ballplayer who can stay away from the nose candy can take his place. I’ve never understood the American obsession with employers giving employees drug tests.
Roger Clemens – One of the greatest pitchers who ever lived. Yeah, steroids; whaddya do with that? He was amazing. I do wonder to this day, though, why the hell he was not ejected, and suspended, for throwing a broken bat at an opposing player. Yet another in a long list of capital assholes on this ballot.
Barry Bonds – See Clemens, Roger, but he never tried to hit an opposing player with a weapon.
Lee Smith – As relief pitchers go Smith was very good, but it’s inescapably the fact that he was a part time player whose entire career was equal to about six seasons of Mike Mussina. Lee Smith was not as valuable over the course of his career as Devon White was, nor did he ever have a year as valuable to his team as Devon White’s third best season. Nobody would put Devon White in the Hall of Fame.
Curt Schilling – Assholus Supremus, yes. Let’s leave aside his belief in fairy tales and his screwing over a whole company’s worth of video game designers because that has nothing to do with his candidacy; was he a Hall of Fame pitcher? I am inclined to say so, though his lack of extra flashy statistical markers and the heavy ballot near-guarantee he will not get in this year. His postseason career was fabulous and IMHO is equivalent in value to a Cy-Young-level regular season added onto his accomplishments.
Edgar Martinez – See Larry Walker, below.
**Alan Trammell **– A deserving player on a hard ballot. I’d sure vote him in before I voted in Edgar Martinez.
Mike Mussina – Wildly underrated, just went out every year and won a bunch of games. I’d vote for him every day.
**Jeff Kent **– I think he comes up a bit short but he sure was a hell of a player. When the Blue Jays brought him up in 1992 to fill in for the always-injured Kelly Gruber, I was astounded. I could not understand how nobody was talking about this obviously talented young player; I’d never heard of the guy, and yet he was visibly a major leaguer through and through. (He was drafted in the 20th round, so there’s one reason, I guess.) Then they traded him for David Cone which I guess helped that year, but God wouldn’t the Jays have been nicely positioned with Jeff Kent playing third base for a long time.
I work with a guy who looks like Jeff Kent’s twin brother. I’m talking doppleganger. It’s creepy.
**
Fred McGriff **– Again, as a Blue Jay fan, I’d be overjoyed if the Crime Dog made it but he doesn’t really merit it. One of the few players in major league history to win a home run title in both leagues, another being…
Mark McGwire – If you leave aside the PED stuff, and I’m going to, it is still not super obvious he makes a ten-man ballot this year. His career is very short of a Hall of Famer, leaving him around 61-63 WAR, which is on the bubble and well below, say, Alan Trammell. Of course, the counterargument is that maybe 62 WAR in a shorter career is more impressive. McGwire’s 1998 is a pretty monstrous peak. I have no objection to his being in the Hall, but I did not vote for him this year just because I felt there were more than ten more deserving candidates. You could sway me though.
**Larry Walker **– Larry Walker was a better player than Edgar Martinez, IMHO. I don’t really get why there is such a groundswell of support for Edgar, and yet Walker, in a career of the same length, was just as good. Yes, his numbers were inflated by Coors Field, but he was still a hell of a good hitter and he was a very good defensive player, whereas Edgar, obviously, had basically no defensive value at all. So I voted for Larry, though he’s at the bottom of my ballot.
Don Mattingly – The Nomar Garciaparra of first basemen.
Sammy Sosa – For all the home runs, Sosa wasn’t as good a player as a lot of guys on this list. Hitting home runs was really his only skill for much of his career; his career OBP was .344 at a time when that was average at best for a corner outfielder. When he got really, really good, he was awesome, but that period of time was short.