Should the BBWAA vote for Bonds and Clemens for the Hall of Fame?
I wrote about this a year ago: this is an updated version of the same post, call it a 2nd Edition. I’ll answer the question here up front: NO. If I were a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), I would NOT vote for either Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
This is the fourth time that Bonds and Clemens have appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot. We’re talking about two of the greatest players in the history of the game, a player who hit more home runs than Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron and won 7 Most Valuable Player trophies. We’re talking about a 7-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher with 354 career wins, 3rd most in the last 100 years. And of course, we’re also talking about two of the seven biggest poster children for the abuses of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED’s) during what we now dub the “steroid era.”
Since you might be wondering who are the other members of what you could call the “Steroid Seven,” I give you Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Manny Ramirez. With Clemens being the only pitcher in this bunch, the six position players occupy 6 of the top 15 positions on the all-time home run list and all seven would be slam-dunk Hall of Famers if not for the links to steroids. If you want to add an eighth member to this group, you could pick Gary Sheffield, owner of 509 lifetime home runs. Sheffield joined the ballot for the first time last year and, in part because he was one of the 98 players named Mitchell Report on steroids in 2007 (along with Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro), he earned just 12% support from the 571 voting writers. There are many other names stained in the sordid history of PED’s but these are the most prominent. In a separate post, I’ve broken down whether Sheffield deserves a Cooperstown plaque on the merits of his career, which you can read here.
McGwire, owner of 583 career home runs and the best at bat to home run ratio of all time, debuted on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2007. Big Mac, who (along with A-Rod) has actually admitted his steroid use, was the first PED-linked superstar to appear on the ballot and received 128 votes from the writers (23.5% of the total and far, far short of the 75% needed for induction). In the subsequent eight years, his support has plummeted; just 63 voters marked him on their ballot last year (11%) and, after this year’s voting, he will be off the future ballots. In July 2014, the Hall of Fame’s Board of Director’s changed the long-time policy of allowing a player to remain on the ballot for 15 years and shortened the period of eligibility to just 10 years.
Palmeiro, whose career of 569 home runs and 3,020 hits would have made him a lock for Cooperstown under normal circumstances, appeared on his first ballot in 2011 and garnered just 11% of the total Hall of Fame vote. Three years later, his support dipped to under 5% and he was dropped off future ballots. The sad end to Palmeiro’s career was a failed drug test in 2005 at the beginning of the sport’s testing regimen. Palmeiro had already achieved his lofty career milestones but the failed test killed any chance for a Cooperstown plaque and called into question the authenticity of his career numbers.
Sosa, the only player in MLB history to hit 60+ home runs three times, first appeared on the writers’ ballots in 2013; he got a mere 12.5% of the vote despite his 609 career home runs (5th best all-time when he retired, 8th all-time today). Slammin’ Sammy managed just 36 votes a year ago (6.6%), just 7 above the bare minimum to keep him on future ballots. Sosa’s only official link to steroids was a 2003 “survey test” leaked by the New York Times. Under a deal with the Players Association, the results of this test were supposed to be secret and only meant to determine if a formal random testing program should be implemented but the results were leaked to the Times. The leak was enough: the transformation of the skinny, speedy outfielder into a massive Ruthian slugger reeked of PED’s.
With Palmeiro, McGwire and Sosa having been shunned by the Hall’s writing voters and Rodriguez and Ramirez not yet eligible, the focus is squarely on Bonds and Clemens, with Sheffield eligible for the second time.
It’s easy to explain McGwire’s and Sosa’s exploits (and to a lesser extent Palmeiro’s) as steroid creations. The great home run chase of 1998 mesmerized the nation as these two sluggers blew past Roger Maris’ 27-year old record of 61 home runs in a single season. It was thrilling to watch but there was always a hint of suspicion that virtually no fan or media member wanted to give voice to. It somehow seemed too good to be true and too good to be clean. When reports came out years later linking Big Mac and Slamming Sammy to steroids, the prevailing reaction was “well, of course, it all makes sense now. These guys weren’t really that good.” In reality it’s much more complicated than that. There were many factors in the game that boosted power numbers throughout the majors, but it’s easy today to explain the cartoonish home run numbers as the intended byproduct of scientific engineering.
Bonds and Clemens are in a different category altogether. Their greatness as players is not so easily dismissed as pharmaceutical creations for the very specific reason that they each had established themselves as the top players of their profession before they allegedly started juicing up. According to the work of investigative journalists as well as congressional testimony, Bonds started taking steroids after the 1998 season, likely in part as a reaction to all of the attention McGwire and Sosa were getting from their long-ball binges. Bonds did not partake in the 2005 Congressional hearing because he had already offered grand jury testimony in 2003 regarding BALCO (he was later convicted for obstruction of justice for not being entirely, shall we say, “helpful” in that probe).
As for Clemens, according to the testimony of former trainer Brian MacNamee in his federal trial for perjury (in which he was acquitted, by the way), Clemens first got a “booty shot” from MacNamee in June of 1998. So let’s take Clemens’ record through 1997 and Bonds’ through 1998. What would their final career numbers have been if they had retired after those seasons rather than continuing their careers with (allegedly) medical assistance?
BARRY BONDS
Barry Bonds (through his age 33 season in 1997):
411 HR, 1,216 RBI
1,364 Runs, 445 SB
.966 OPS, 164 OPS+ (see sidebar below)
99.6 WAR (see sidebar)
3 MVP’s
8 Gold Gloves
8 All-Star Games
ROGER CLEMENS
Roger Clemens (through his age 34 season in 1997):
213-188 W-L (.644)
109 CG, 41 shutouts
2.97 ERA, 149 ERA+ (see sidebar)
93.2 WAR
3 Cy Young Awards
1986 A.L. MVP
6 All-Star Games
Putting the “pre-steroid” numbers of Bonds and Clemens into context, it is clear how remarkable their careers already were before they allegedly started using PED’s.
Clemens’ WAR of 93.2 through 1997 would still be good enough for 11th place in the
history of baseball among pitchers at the time. His ERA+ of 149 through 1997 was, at
the time, the best in the history of baseball. (In reality, Clemens “regressed” a little bit in the next 10 years, lowering his ERA+ to 143, which is still the 6th best ever). These particular statistics are recent creations of course and didn’t exist in 1997 but Clemens had already won three Cy Young awards, an MVP trophy, and led the AL five times in the ERA (Earned Runs Average) category that we grew up knowing how to figure out with a calculator.
Bonds’ WAR of 99.6 through 1998 would have been good enough for 19th all-time at that point in history, behind 18 Hall of Famers. The only player among the next 20 after who is not in Cooperstown is Pete Rose. His 164+ OPS would have placed him 10th in the career record books through the ’98 season. Regarding his more tangible accomplishments, he was already a 3-time MVP winner and the only player in the history of baseball to hit over 400 home runs (411) and steal over 400 bases (445). The older and much bulkier version of Bonds, by the way, only stole 69 more bases in the final 9 years of his career.
So, it’s fairly obvious, with all of their accomplishments, both players would have easily been first-ballot Hall of Famers if they had just hung up their spikes before they ever (allegedly) used any PED’s. And, as good as they were, they likely would have still amassed staggering career numbers if they had stayed clean until the end of their playing days. And it’s for that reason that I believe that both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens should be in Cooperstown. However, if I was a member of the BBWAA and I had a vote, I would not include either Bonds or Clemens on my ballot. Let me explain the contradiction.
First of all, let’s get out of the way the obvious reason why they aren’t in the Hall of Fame yet: the preponderance of evidence shows that both players did in fact use steroids, which were and are illegal in this country then and now. They attempted to gain a competitive advantage over other players who were “clean.” Essentially, the anti-Bonds-Clemens argument is that they were dishonest cheaters. This is the same reason why the voters have almost unilaterally rejected McGwire, Sosa, and Palmeiro. The only reason why Bonds and Clemens have gained about 37% of the vote in their three years of eligibility is that there are voters who recognize, as I just chronicled, that these two men were so great as baseball players that there is no shadow of a doubt that their Cooperstown resumes were not a product of steroids, their resumes were merely enhanced by them. There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of players who used PED’s. They didn’t all hit 763 home runs or win 354 games.
However, it is very difficult to argue against a voter, pundit or fan who takes the position that says “they cheated; they don’t deserve to be rewarded with a plaque in Cooperstown.” While there is no excuse for what they did, you have to remember the culture of baseball in the late 1990’s. There was no drug testing in the sport, the fans didn’t seem to care, the media didn’t seem to care, Commissioner Bud Selig didn’t seem to care. Everybody was so caught up in the home run show that they/we all turned a blind eye to what was so apparent for anybody to see. Look at it from Bonds’ and Clemens’ standpoint: “everybody else is doing it, Selig doesn’t care, why shouldn’t I keep up with the Sosas and McGwires and show them how good I am? I’m better than the rest of these guys!”
Imagine that you’re driving on the interstate at the speed limit of 65 miles per hour. Dozens of cars pass you by at 75 miles per hour. You see a state trooper just sitting there on the side of the road, waiting for the 90-mile-per-hour speed demon. Wouldn’t you be tempted to push your speedometer up to 75? Is there anybody reading who hasn’t actually done this? It’s against the law, but we all do it because it’s de facto acceptable to do it. We’re a society that elects presidents who have admitted that they broke the law. Barack Obama wrote about snorting cocaine in his autobiography, George W. Bush had a DWI and Bill Clinton used marijuana (but didn’t inhale, allegedly, hee hee). Nobody cared. The culture of baseball in 1998, regarding PED’s, was “anything goes” and “nobody cares.”
It’s hard to feel sorry for players who earned tens or hundreds of millions of dollars playing a child’s game, but I do feel sad for Bonds, and Clemens, and McGwire, and Sosa, and Palmeiro. I met them all during my ESPN days and liked each one but Bonds; Barry was a little gruff with most of the media. Clemens and Sosa in particular were delightful when they joined our Up Close studio set in Hollywood. The whole thing makes me sad; I regard this whole torrid affair as an unnecessary tragedy.
What these players did was tolerated when they did it. The after the fact witch hunt ensnared them and others by imposing a retroactive morality towards their misdeeds. Well, that retroactive justice does not mean that they have to return their MVP or Cy Young trophies, it doesn’t mean their teams are stripped of their World Series titles (not that there were any titles for Bonds, Sosa or Palmiero). This is not Lance Armstrong justice. The only justice left to impose on these men is by the judge and jury known as the Baseball Writers Association of America. They have rendered their decision and the verdict is to deny each and every one of them entrance into the Hall of Fame.
In his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility, Clemens earned 38% of the writers’ votes, barely half of the 75% needed for induction. Bonds tallied 36% in his first year. The next year, both men earned about 35% of the vote. Many pundits felt that the first year vote was one of “making a statement” of disapproval and that, in the second year, the vote totals would significantly increase. Instead, the pro-Bonds-Clemens camp remained virtually intact and the anti-Bonds-Clemens camp remained intact as well. In year #3, the level of support ticked up slightly but very slightly, with 4 more votes each. So what we have is a stalemate.
Most players’ ballot voting totals fluctuate from year to year. Writers study a player’s career further and decide to change their votes from “yes” to “no” or vice versa. Bert Blyleven gained just 17.5% of the vote in 1998 but, as time passed and supporters made convincing arguments, he eventually gained enshrinement on his 14th try with nearly 80% support. Blyleven’s is just one of the most recent examples; it’s happened throughout the history of Hall of Fame voting.
With Bonds and Clemens, nobody is quibbling over whether their statistics are Cooperstown worthy. Of course they were. So the vote for or against Bonds or Clemens is not about whether they’re two of the best ten players on the ballot (they’re the best two, by far). The vote is strictly about morality. Do they deserve to gain induction in spite of their sins or should they be denied because of them?
OK, now that we’ve established what’s happened so far and my personal belief that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were so far and away better than their clean or dirty peers that they belong in Cooperstown, why am I also advocating that the current group of writers not vote for either men (or McGwire and Sosa for that matter)?
The reason is simple pragmatism. Bonds and Clemens and not going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame through the writers’ ballots. Period. You would have to change the minds of half of the “against” voters and that is simply not going to happen. Each of the approximately 450 members of the BBWAA who are eligible to vote can vote for up to ten players. They can also vote for as few as they want. Anybody who votes for Bonds or Clemens is essentially limiting themselves to eight votes for players who have a fighting chance for enshrinement. The problem is that there are currently 10-to-20 other players on the ballot who had careers worthy of serious Cooperstown consideration. The PED boys’ continued presence on the ballot is creating a backlog. It’s making the math harder and harder for anybody but a “no-doubt” candidate to make it.
This year, Ken Griffey Jr. is that no-doubt candidate and will almost certainly get elected; he will be named on the ballots of virtually every writer who is serious about the honor of voting. So anybody who votes for Griffey and also votes for Bonds or Clemens has only seven spaces left to choose among the remaining 15 or so worthy choices.
By the way, it’s not just Bonds, Clemens, McGwire and Sosa who are tainted by PED’s on the ballot. Gary Sheffield joined them last year and two other players, Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell, are still on the ballot because of currently unsubstantiated “suspicions” of PED use. In the minds of some voters, they are guilty until proven innocent. Piazza earned 70% of the vote last year, Bagwell 56%.
So with so many star players (clean or otherwise) clogging up the ballot, excellent players with no PED links like Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, Edgar Martinez, Tim Raines, Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, Alan Trammell, Jeff Kent have been getting lost in the shuffle because voters cannot vote for more than ten players. In my view, there are between 20 and 22 players (17 not linked to PED’s) on the current ballot who are worthy of Coopesrtown consideration. I’m not suggesting that all 17 or 22 should be enshrined, but it is a document-able fact that all 22 were better baseball players than many others who already have plaques in the museum.
So my advice to the voters is this: if you believe that Bonds and Clemens belong in Cooperstown (as I do) but also believe that there are at least ten other players who deserve it as well, then leave Bonds and Clemens off your ballots. They’re not going to get in anyway, so help the cause of other worthy players who have, so far, been collateral damage of the steroid era. If you don’t think there are more than 8 other players worthy of induction, then go ahead and vote for them if you please.
The counter-argument to what I’m proposing is that it lacks integrity, that voters should select the 10 men who they feel are the most worthy candidates and that the should not “game” the system. Intellectually, I agree with that position but the problem is this: in the normal PED-free Hall of Fame voting universe, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would not be on the ballot every year. The “rule of 10” worked for so long because the obvious Hall of Famers would only appear on the ballot one time. Without the steroid factor, Bonds and Clemens would have each been elected in their first year of eligibility with nearly unanimous acclaim. So, unless voters are permitted to vote for more than 10 players, the system is already broken and “gaming” it is the best way to keep other players from suffering for the sins of the PED users. Incidentally, a group of writers petitioned the Hall’s Board of Directors to allow them to vote for 12 players starting this year. That plea has thus far fallen on deaf ears, a clear signal that the Hall doesn’t want to change the rules in such a way that might pave a path for Bonds and Clemens to deliver a Coopersrtown acceptance speech.
The Bonds-Clemens debate is like the abortion debate, albeit with lower stakes. Some people believe that abortion is murder; others believe that nobody has the right to tell a woman what she can do with her body. It’s pretty hard to sway people from those two deeply held convictions. In our lifetimes we may never get 75% of the population to agree on the issue. It’s hard to get 75% of the people to agree on anything and there’s virtually no chance that the Bonds-Clemens support (which has been steady around 35%-37% for three cycles) is going to more than double in the next 7 years.
Now, there are few recent developments that give a glimmer of hope to Barry and Roger. This summer Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors made a change to the composition of the voters that could potentially result in an uptick in voting support for the megastars. For a long time the Hall allowed all members of the BBWAA to vote, even those who have not covered the game for decades. The change made this summer was to require that the voters be actively covering Major League Baseball with a grace period of just 10 years. The net impact of this change is that there will be a smaller voting body, likely about 450 voters instead of the 571 who voted a year ago. The “purged” voters are mostly older and more likely to have taken a hard line against steroid users.
It’s also true there is some evidence that a few of the still-voting hard-liners are softening their position. There’s an excellent Excel Online website created by Ryan Tibbs that tracks all of the writers’ ballots that have been publicly released. As of Tuesday evening, of the first 171 ballots released, a net eleven new voters have gone to the pro-Bonds camp and nine have gone pro-Clemens. These writers who have flipped include prominent members like ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick and the Baltimore Sun’s Ken Rosenthal, with CBS’ Jon Heyman voting for Bonds only. Rosenthal and Heyman regularly on MLB Network, giving each a bigger megaphone than their average voting colleague.
Still, despite the small positive shift in favor of Bonds and Clemens, their overall support among the first 171 voters is right around 49%. This means that each would have to be named on about 91% of the not-yet-released ballots. It’s important to know that the early returns of publicly released ballots always over-estimate the vote totals for most players, so there is no way whatsoever that Bonds and Clemens are going to even reach the 50% plateau this year when the final totals are announced. No way. No how. Not happening. Zero chance whatsoever.
Now, it is possible that the winds will start to shift after this year’s Hall of Fame Class of 2016 is announced. Besides the obvious selection of Griffey, there’s a decent chance that Mike Piazza will also be elected to the Hall of Fame next week. Piazza, who was the greatest hitting catcher in the history of baseball and has no official links to steroids, received 70% of the vote last year, falling just 45 votes shy of induction. With over a hundred older, retired writers no longer voting, the percentages may now work in his favor. In the previously mentioned Hall of Fame “tracker” by the brilliant Mr. Tibbs, Piazza is running at 86%. Now, as I said earlier, these early ballots are likely to over-estimate a player’s vote percentage but 86% is promising. A year ago, the same site showed 75% support on publicly released ballots, only 5% higher than his actual total.
If Piazza, who has been suspected of steroid use because of acne on his back or maybe because he just hit the ball too damn hard, is inducted into the Hall of Fame, it’s possible that more hard-liners will soften their positions about Bonds and Clemens. But I doubt it. You’re still talking about a massive shift in mindsets that’s just not likely to happen in a six year period.
Unlike Bonds and Clemens, Piazza had a “normal” career arc, especially for a catcher. His offensive productivity started to decline when he was 34 years old and he was finished as a player shortly after his 39th birthday, spending his final year in the majors as a DH with the Oakland A’s. Piazza always looked like a first baseman miscast as a catcher and was never known for his defensive prowess. He really should have been moved off the dish in his early 30’s; that might have prolonged his career.
One final note, this regarding Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who are still on the ballot but are receiving very little support (McGwire got 10% last year, Sosa 6.6%). If you’re a voter wrestling with the decision of whether to leave off the 8th and 10th leading home run hitters of all time and the stars of the thrilling 1998 home run chase, I’m going to make it easy: there are so many good players on the 2016 ballot that McGwire and Sosa are not among the ten best. Using WAR (Wins Above Replacement), they are the 11th and 15th best players on this ballot. Now, I do not worship at the temple of WAR. I consider it a flawed statistic, but it does give food for thought and it’s an easy way to justify not voting for players who have so little support now that their chances of getting elected are zero anyway. As with Bonds and Clemens, the majority of BBWAA writers have rendered their verdict; the verdict is “guilty” for all four men and there’s no reason to fight that battle when there are other players worthy of the honor of enshrinement into Cooperstown.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig