Cooperstown’s Crumbling PED Wall

(updated on January 2, 2017)

A year ago I penned an article entitled, “Why Writers should NOT vote for Bonds and Clemens for the Hall.”  My reasoning was this: both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had polled at 35% (of the minimum 75% needed for induction) on the 2015 Hall of Fame ballot, which means that 65% (nearly two-thirds) of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) had deemed them unworthy of a plaque in Cooperstown. It’s not like that 65% of the voters were wondering whether Bonds’ 762 home runs or Clemens’ 354 wins were “enough” to justify enshrinement. Those 65% were voting against these two legends because they felt that their use of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED’s) had tainted the game and their careers. In order to move Bonds and Clemens from 35% to 75%, more than half of the “no” vote would have to change their minds.

A year ago, I felt that was a pipe dream that enough voters would switch from “no” to “yes” and that any voter who kept voting for Bonds and Clemens year-after-year-after-year-after-year was in effect punishing their perceived 11th and 12th best players on the ballot because the Hall only lets you vote for 10 men per year. In a normal PED-free universe, these two all-time greats would have been no-doubt first-ballot inductees but, since we don’t live in that universe, they’re clogging up the ballot every year and helping prevent other worthy players from their chance at Cooperstown immortality. The presence of Bonds and Clemens on the ballot every year has, for many voters, essentially turned the limit of 10 to a limit of 8.

Well, one year later, it seems like that large immovable wall that keeps PED users out of the Hall of Fame is beginning to show some fissures. Bonds and Clemens are doing really well in the “early voting” totals among publicly released ballots in advance of the January 18th announcement. In addition, catcher Ivan Rodriguez, who has also been linked by some to PED’s, is up for election for the first time and has a decent chance to be a first-ballot inductee. More on I-Rod a bit later in this piece.

 

Let’s start at the beginning in this Hall of Fame voting saga as it relates to the imaginary wall that has heretofore excluded the obvious steroid abusers. This is the fifth time that both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are on the HOF ballot. Their first ballot, the 2013 ballot, contained one of the greatest collection of players appearing on the ballot for the first time in the history of the game of baseball. Besides Bonds and Clemens, there were six other first-timers on that ballot who had a career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) of 50 or above: Curt Schilling, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, Kenny Lofton and David Wells. The last time there were as many as 8 first-time players on the ballot with a 50+ WAR was 1948.

Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro were also still on the ballot, holdovers from previous elections.

Simply put, four of the top 12 home run hitters of all time (as of December 2012) were on that Hall of Fame ballot. Two members of the 3,000-hit club (Palmeiro and Biggio) were on that ballot. A seven-time Cy Young Award winner (Clemens) was on that ballot. Many other terrific players (Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Bernie Williams, Jack Morris, and Lee Smith) were up for consideration.

The potential modern player class of inductees owned a combined 14 MVP trophies (7 belong to Bonds), 11 batting titles, 7 Cy Youngs (all to Clemens) and 2 World Series MVP’s (Morris and Schilling).

Not one of these luminaries got the necessary 75% of the vote to get into the Hall of Fame that year.

Not a single one.

 

Because of the Veterans’ Committee vote, there was still a ceremony that summer but the only inductions in Cooperstown in 2013 were for three men who died before 1940, one of whom (19th century player Deacon White) was born 13 years before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for the presidency.

 

Since that January day in 2013 when the Cooperstown shutout was announced, that first-year-on-the-ballot group has produced two Hall of Famers (Biggio and Piazza) in the years that have followed, with Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Schilling still hoping to hear their name called and with McGwire and Palmeiro now off the BBWAA ballot entirely. Schilling is a special case because of his less than stupendous regular season numbers and now the controversy surrounding some of his Tweeting but with Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, McGwire and Palmeiro, their absence from the Hall of Fame walls in Cooperstown boils down to one thing: their use (suspected, admitted or proven) of PED’s.

Steroid users McGwire and Palmeiro had been on multiple ballots before the big shutout of 2013, neither ever getting even up to 25% support in an election that requires 75% but the cases of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were the ultimate litmus test. While it’s reasonable to wonder whether the use of PED’s provided the juice for Big Mac and Raffy to finish their careers with Cooperstown-caliber statistics, nobody doubts (then or now) that Bonds or Clemens had Hall of Fame worthy accomplishments before the widely accepted timelines of when the two started using (1999 for Bonds, 1998 for Clemens). If you have those doubts, I’ll help you purge them later in this piece.

Of course, we’re still talking about this four years later because Bonds and Clemens were not inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013, nor have they been in the three years that followed. After their debut on the ballot with 36% (Bonds) and 38% (Clemens), the greatest hitter and pitcher of their generation saw their voting support dip in 2014 to 35% each. That dip made it look abundantly clear (to me, anyway) that the members of the BBWAA would never see fit to put these men into Cooperstown.

These are the votes for their first three years on the writers’ ballot:

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This looked like the abortion debate in politics. If one side is convinced it’s murder and the other side believes that a woman has the right to control her own body, it’s hard to move people from one position to the other. In the minds of voters, either Bonds and Clemens are cheaters and disgraced the game or you accept their PED use and recognize them for being the Hall of Famers that they already were before they started using.

However, something changed 12 months ago. Let’s look at the year-by-year vote chart and add the 2016 vote:

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For the first time, our two principal characters saw a relatively small, but meaningful, boost in their voting support. There were a few key differences between 2015 to help explain the difference.

• The 2015 ballot had 549 voters. Clemens got 37.5%, Bonds 36.8% (an increase of just 2.1% each from 2014).
• The 2016 ballot had just 440 voters (BBWAA members who had been inactive for 10 years were purged), creating (overall) a younger and perhaps more forgiving voting electorate. This means that Clemens and Bonds each received a higher voting percentage despite a smaller overall vote total.
• The 2014 ballot had three first-ballot Hall of Famers: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas. The 2015 ballot also had three first-timers: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz. The 2016 ballot only had one (Ken Griffey Jr.). It’s a simple fact that the 2016 ballot wasn’t quite as stacked as the previous two, leaving room for some on the fence voters to put Bonds and Clemens on their ballots without feeling that they were excluding otherwise worthy players.
• Both Bonds and Clemens saw a net gain of 14 new voters among the 310 who publicly revealed their ballots. All but one of the new voters also voted for Mike Piazza, who joined Griffey in the HOF Class of ’16.

The induction of Piazza was to some the first crack in Cooperstown’s PED wall. Piazza’s baseball ascent was remarkable. He was a 62nd round draft pick in 1988, selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers mostly as a favor to his godfather, Tommy Lasorda, an old friend of Mike’s father. Anyway, Piazza went on to a prolific MLB career, appearing in 12 All-Star games with the Dodgers and New York Mets while slugging 427 home runs, an all-time record for catchers. Piazza’s record would normally have resulted in a first-ballot Hall of Fame election but he debuted on that star-studded 2013 ballot with just 58% of the vote.

Unlike Bonds and Clemens (who had congressional investigations tied to their abuse of steroids), Piazza had no link whatsoever. He wasn’t called to testify to Congress, he wasn’t named in Jose Canseco’s tell-all books (more on those later), he wasn’t named in the Mitchell Report on steroids. No link at all.

The case against Piazza was that he had acne on his back. The case against was that he hit too many home runs for a catcher, that he was too strong, that a 62nd round draft pick shouldn’t have turned into the most powerful hitter for a catcher in the history of the sport.

There was no case and eventually (after falling short three times), 83% of the BBWAA electorate put Mike Piazza into the Hall of Fame. What his induction meant was that no longer would otherwise worthy players be held back simply because of suspicion and innuendo.

On deck in the parade of the suspected is the great Houston Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell, who received 72% of the 2016 vote and is likely to get that wonderful call in a few weeks. Like Piazza, Bagwell was an unlikely slugger. Critics like to point to the discrepancy between his 449 major league home runs and the fact that he hit just six of them in 859 minor league at bats. But the truth is that it’s not uncommon for young players to gain power as they age and fill out. Bagwell was a workout fiend (testimony given by a current friend of mine who went to the same gym in Houston) and his excellence as a player wasn’t limited to hitting home runs. Of the 93 players in history who have clubbed 350 home runs or more, Bagwell ranks 37th in at bat to home run ratio, four places behind just-retired Mark Teixeira and one spot behind the immortal Greg Vaughn.

What makes Bagwell a Hall of Famer is also his lifetime .297 career batting average and .406 on-base%. As a good base-runner and solid fielder, the totality of Bagwell’s game yielded him 79.6 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), fourth best among first basemen since 1900 (behind only Lou Gehrig, Albert Pujols and Jimmie Foxx) and ahead of recent HOF inductee Frank Thomas.

Assuming that Bagwell will get his day in Cooperstown this summer, it will be (for some) another crack in that PED wall. As with Piazza, there was never a failed drug test, no mention in the Mitchell Report, no link to steroids whatsoever. What bothered people is that he looked like another baseball version of the Incredible Hulk. Clearly Bagwell was taking some sort of supplement (as most players do) but there’s no evidence that he ever used an illegal steroid and the Hall of Fame voters are recognizing that by voting for him in droves this year.

 

Anyway, to get back to our two leading men (Bonds and Clemens), last year’s increase of their voting support by about 7.5% each was promising but not the kind of earth-shattering change that would lead to a 75% super-majority needed to get into the Hall. About 130 more hearts and minds would still need to be changed. Still, despite the odds, it seems that something this year has indeed dramatically changed in the minds of a significantly greater percentage of the voting body and there is now legitimate hope (or dread, depending on your perspective) that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens will get their plaques in Cooperstown.

The table below shows the writers’ ballot vote percentages for several key players on a year by year basis. A couple of notes on this table:

• By point of comparison, I’m showing the vote percentages of the other PED-linked players from that 2013 ballot as well as three more who have joined the party since then (Gary Sheffield in 2015 with Ivan Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez this year).
• Since you’ll all be curious by now, I’ll share the progress of six players who are have not been linked to PED’s and are at 50% or more in the early voting for 2017.
• The last column (2017) is for the current vote whose full results aren’t known yet. I’ve listed the updated percentage of support for all publicly released ballots (as 3:00p PT on January 2nd), as tracked by the marvelous Ryan Thibodaux on his Google Drive Hall of Fame Tracker. More on the “tracker” below.

 

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OK, so the 2017 column is somewhat startling, thus I must remind the reader that the numbers reflect “early voting” of those BBWAA members who have shared their ballots publicly. There is still time left. Until a rule change starting next year, those who are doing the voting do not have to share their selections with the public.

First of all, it’s time to congratulate the first two members of the Hall of Fame Class of 2017, Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines and, although it’s less certain (for reasons I’ll detail below), Ivan Rodriguez is likely to get a plaque as well.

What should leap off the page here, however, is that Bonds and Clemens are seeing a dramatic spike in their voting percentages. Again, it’s still very early and two-thirds of the ballots have not been made public but to see the two primary PED poster children at 70% of the vote is extremely surprising. Of the first 157 voters who have made their selections publicly known, 21 have switched from a “no” on Bonds to a “yes” and 22 have gone from “no” on Clemens to “yes.” That’s more positive flips (among 145 returning voters) than the flips they got a year ago from 310 writers who displayed their ballots publicly.

Some other notes:

• 11 out of 12 first-time voters have included Bonds and Clemens on their ballots, which bodes well for future years.
• Well-known writers such as Steve Buckley (Boston Herald), Evan Grant (Dallas Morning News), Richard Justice (mlb.com), and Roch Kubatko (MASN sports) and, most significantly, Hall of Famer Peter Gammons (MLB Network) have gone from “no” to “yes.” (You can read Gammons’ take by clicking here). Even the usually unforgiving hard-ass Dan Shaughnessy (Boston Globe) wrote a column recently that started this way: “The Great Wall of Steroids that keeps so many baseball stars out of Cooperstown is crumbling right before our eyes. After years of fighting the fight, I am considering dropping my weapon and coming down off the Wall.” Count Shaughnessy as a “maybe” right now because he has yet to submit his ballot for the public to see.
• Of the 145 ballots among returning voters that are currently public, 21 out of 64 voters (33%) who did not vote for Bonds last year have switched into his camp. For Clemens, 22 out of the 65 voters (34%) who did not vote for him last year have changed their minds.
• One and only writer for now (George Willis of the New York Post) voted for Bonds and Clemens last year but removed their names this year.
• A year ago, Bonds and Clemens saw a switch of 14 “nays” to “ayes” out of the 310 voters who made their ballots public. So far this year, they’ve gained 21 or 22 votes out of just the first 157 voters who have revealed their selections. If that trend holds, they may gain more than 50 votes overall. That’s the kind of spike that can build momentum for future years.

 

Now, before we start polishing Bonds’ and Clemens’ plaques in Cooperstown, please make note that, of the 145 returning voters’ ballots revealed publicly, about 55% of them voted for the tarnished legends last year (about 10 points above the final vote total) so the early vote percentages of 70% do not predict a final vote of 70%. It would require a changed mind of approximately 55% of last year’s “no” voters to push Bonds and Clemens above 75% and they’re currently getting a shift of about 33%. Still, when the most well-known writer of them all (Gammons) switches sides and an influential journalist such as Shaughnessy publicly questions his anti-PED position, it shows that a fundamental change of opinion is underway, even among the hard-liners. Shaughnessy, like Gammons, is in the Hall of Fame himself; he won last year’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award, an annual honor conferred unto longtime baseball scribes. His and Gammons’ opinions matter.

Remember this: the writers had until December 31st to submit their ballots. A great number of them were likely tracking the early numbers and many probably read Shaughnessy’s column, which was released a few weeks ago. A writer who might have seen a Bonds-Clemens vote as a futile one might no longer see it that way.

 

If there is a sea change of opinion underway, what’s the reason? The first is that the election last year of Mike Piazza signaled an overall softening towards the “PED suspected but not indicted” class. This resulted in Piazza no longer being excluded from Cooperstown because of acne on his back and that softening is also going to give Bagwell a spot in the Hall after this year’s election. It appears that most of the electorate will no longer hold it against Bagwell that he seemed to lose a lot of bulk after his playing career ended.

Now, let’s be clear, Piazza and Bagwell were never actually linked to steroids (as Bonds and Clemens have been), there were just whispers and suspicions. Still, it’s starting to dawn on many writers that the Hall of Fame likely already includes a PED user or several, whether it’s Piazza or someone nobody’s thought about it. So, logically, if you accept the notion that the Cooperstown PED wall has already been breached, the logic of excluding two of the greatest players in the history of the sport becomes more hazy.

Perhaps of greater significance than the Piazza induction, it seems plain to me (and Shaughnessy mentions this in his column as well) that the election of former Commissioner Bud Selig to the Hall of Fame earlier this month might be a key factor in creating a greater culture of tolerance among the writers. 15 out of 16 members of the “Today’s Game” committee (a panel that included 8 Hall of Famers) saw fit to elect Selig to the Hall despite the fact that, as commissioner, he presided over the steroid era, which lasted over a decade under his watch. The culpability for the blissful disregard of rampant PED use in the 1990’s and early 2000’s rests on the shoulders of many people, including all of the players (guilty or not) who allowed their union to stonewall on the issue but at least some of the blame must lie at the feet of the man who was overseeing the sport as the commissioner.

Writers that I respect greatly (Gammons and ESPN’s Buster Olney) have come to Selig’s defense, citing the union’s intransigence on the issue of steroid abuse, but when you’re essentially the CEO of a large organization, you can take credit for the successes but must accept blame for the failures, even those ultimately beyond your control.

At least 7 out of 8 current Hall of Fame members on the “Today’s Game” committee had no problem putting Bud Selig in the Hall of Fame. They overlooked the huge blemishes on his tenure: the PED era, the cancelling of the 1994 World Series, and the silly “league that wins the All-Star Game gets home field in the World Series” rule. They chose instead to reward him with a plaque of Cooperstown because of the good things that happened during his tenure: the exciting expanded playoffs, inter-league play, instant replay, the World Baseball Classic, and the explosion of revenues in the sport as a whole.

 

So, the logic is now quite compelling: if it’s OK to enshrine the commissioner who presided over a culture in the sport that made the likes of Bonds and Clemens feel like nobody gave a rat’s turd whether they used steroids or not, then why isn’t it OK to enshrine them as well?

Now, it should be noted that the same committee that elected Selig to the Hall of Fame chose to spurn Mark McGwire, who was on the same ballot. The actual vote totals are unknown but we do know that Big Mac got less than five votes from the 16-man panel while 15 of them voted for Selig. It’s a fair argument, however, to say that McGwire’s Cooperstown resume only exists because of his use of PED’s. He has admitted that he started using steroids to help him recover from injuries quicker. If using the drugs kept him on the field, it’s not unreasonable to say that he would have hit far fewer than his final career total of 583 blasts if he had played clean. Remember, too, that it was publicly known late in 1998 that he was using a supplement called androstenedione, which at the time was legal in MLB. Did that help him hit 70 home runs? I certainly would think so. How many home runs were the result of the mixed cocktail of andro and illegal steroids? There’s no way to know for sure but one would think it would have to be a significant number.

 

Personally, if the Cooperstown PED wall is cracking, I think that McGwire was far enough above the bar that he should be too but I understand the counterargument. Unlike with Piazza, Bagwell and Rodriguez, we know that Big Mac used PED’s. He’s admitted it. I still think he’s a Hall of Famer. You can see more on my logic in this piece I wrote a few weeks ago. Anyway, let’s call it an unknown, whether McGwire could have amassed Cooperstown caliber numbers if he had played his entire career clean.

So, now, for the principal PED poster children, let’s ponder the question for a moment: if Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had never used steroids, would they be Hall of Famers anyway. To me, the answer is an obvious “yes” but I’m going to bludgeon you, my poor readers, over the head with it in case you don’t agree. Most reporters agree that Bonds started using PED’s after the 1998 season because he was irritated by the McGwire-Sosa home run chase, feeling (correctly) that he was a vastly superior player. So let’s look at what he accomplished between his rookie season in 1986 and what we think to be his final “clean” season in 1998 by comparing him in six statistical categories with his peers. I’ve chosen WAR (Wins Above Replacement), OPS+ (which is ballpark-adjusted on-base% plus slugging % and for which 100 is league average), and Runs Created (an advanced sabermetric formula combining most key offensive statistics) with the traditional statistics of Home Runs, RBI and Runs Scored.

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I do not believe that WAR is the be-all, end-all of baseball statistics but when you’re 34 wins higher than the next best player, you kind of have to take notice. Bonds’ high WAR is explained in part by superior defensive metrics reflected in his 8 Gold Gloves and base-running metrics reflected in his 445 stolen bases for the first 13 years of his career (fourth most in the majors during those years). With his 3 MVP’s and 4 other top 5 finishes, Barry Bonds would have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer if he had simply retired after the 1998 season.

 

How about Roger Clemens? According to his court cases, Clemens started using steroids in 1998. This is according to his former trainer, Brian McNamee. who told the Mitchell Report that he had started injecting the Rocket with steroids in ’98 while Clemens was with the Toronto Blue Jays. Now, many people assume that Clemens started using PED’s a year earlier, after his time with the Boston Red Sox and before his tenure in Toronto, which began in the 1997 season. The reason for this assumption is that, after a mediocre (by his standards) ’96 campaign in Boston, Clemens had the best year in ’97 after signing a free agent contract with the Jays. Clemens went 21-7 that year with a 2.05 ERA and 292 strikeouts en route to his fourth of seven Cy Young Awards.

Again, Clemens was still a solid hurler but seemingly on the decline from 1993-1996 so it is understandable that attribute his ’97 re-birth to steroids. That’s not the testimony of McNamee (who said he started injecting Clemens in 1998) but that’s what people assume. Let’s take that at face value and, for the sake of argument, look only at the Rocket’s Red Sox years, from his rookie campaign in 1984 to his final year in Beantown in 1996. Here is how Clemens fares against his peers in WAR, ERA+ (which adjusts for park effects and for which 100 is league average), strikeouts, wins, complete games and shutouts.

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Again, as with Bonds versus his contemporaries, Clemens stands well above everyone else. It’s not an absolute given that a 192-win career, had it ended after 1996, would have resulted with a plaque in Cooperstown but it’s almost impossible to conceive a scenario where a steroid-free Clemens wouldn’t have at least put up several seasons of “counting stat” numbers that would have solidified an already sterling career and secured his place in the Hall.

 

Let’s finish our discussion of the cracks in Cooperstown’s PED wall by taking a look at the other candidates currently on the BBWAA ballot who have alleged links to steroids.

Ivan Rodriguez: 

Based on the early voting, catcher Ivan Rodriguez has a very good chance to be inducted into Cooperstown in his first year on the ballot. If all things were equal, this would be an obvious thing. In his 21-year major league career, according to WAR, Rodriguez was the third best catcher in the history of baseball (behind Johnny Bench and barely behind Gary Carter). The Puerto Rican born “Pudge” finished his career with a 68.4 WAR, just one percentage point ahead of the original “Pudge,” Carlton Fisk.

He was by far the best throwing catcher that I personally ever saw. He could cut down an opponent’s running game with a cannon of an arm and he had cat-like reflexes behind the plate. From the first time I saw him play, as a 19-year old rookie in 1991, he looked like a Hall of Famer in the making.

Just a few career highlights:

• 13 Gold Gloves (most ever for a catcher and tied with Ozzie Smith for 2nd most ever for any non-pitcher)
• 14 All-Star Games (tied with Bench for 2nd most ever for a catcher, behind Yogi Berra’s 18)
• 1999 MVP (when he hit .332 with 35 HR, 113 RBI a 156 OPS+, and threw out 56% of all base-stealers).
• Threw out 46% of all base-runners in his career (best in MLB for last 50 years)
• Most hits (2,844), runs (1,354), doubles (572) all-time for all MLB catchers
• .296 career batting average (3rd best among catcher behind Mike Piazza and Joe Mauer in last 70 years with a minimum of 4,500 plate appearances)
• Best overall defensive catcher of all-time (according to Baseball-Reference’s “Runs above Average for Fielding”)

 

That’s a no-doubt Hall of Fame resume for sure except for the one big doubt, the potential that he took PED’s. Rodriguez never tested positive and he was not named in the Mitchell Report but he was named by former teammate Jose Canseco in his two books “Juiced” and “Vindicated.” There is no proof that I-Rod used PED’s, none whatsoever. The only “evidence” against him is the written testimony of Canseco in the two books.

There is, however, one other factor that many writers have noted. Once MLB started implementing stringent drug testing in 2005, Rodriguez showed up at training camp 20-to-25 pounds lighter than he had been in the previous year. And it’s a fact that he was never a prolific offensive player again. In 2004, he hit .336 with 19 home runs, 86 RBI and a 137 OPS+. The leaner Rodriguez, in 2005, hit just .276 with 14 homers, 50 RBI and a below-league-average 95 OPS+.

Now, Rodriguez was 33 years old in 2005 and that’s an age when most catchers start or are already in the decline phase of his career so it’s hard to put too much stock in that but his days as a significant offensive force were over. On the other hand, after three consecutive years of throwing out less than 40% of all base-stealers, I-Rod gunned down over 50% of would be thieves in both 2004 and 2005 so his leaner physique might well have helped him with his primary function as a top-flight defensive catcher.

 

Are Canseco’s words and some weight loss enough to deny Pudge a place in the Hall of Fame? Based on the early voting, the answer is “no.” I-Rod is sitting comfortably in the mid-80’s in an election where he needs 75%. Remember, though, that the list of early voters skews towards the more permissive bunch of Hall of Fame electors. In addition, it’s important to remember that many “old school” writers like to make players wait a year before voting for them, believing that a “first ballot” Hall of Fame player should be one of the super elites. On the other hand, I-Rod’s 13 Gold Gloves and 14 All-Star games are the types of credentials that a generalized “old school” writer likes to see.

Regarding the steroid question, I personally have no reason to believe that Canseco was lying about Rodriguez’ drug use. If you asked me to say “yes or no, did Rodriguez use PED’s” I would have to say “yes.”  However, I don’t feel that Canseco’s word alone is a sufficient reason to hold back one of the greatest defensive catchers in the history of the game from the Hall of Fame and it’s clear that a great deal of writers agree.

Keep an eye on the Hall of Fame tracker. If, on the eve of the big announcement on January 18th, Pudge is still around 85%, he’s probably going to get in. If he’s in the low 80’s, consider it a toss-up. If his public “early voting” totals are less than 80%, it’s likely he’ll fall short.

The case of Ivan Rodriguez brings us back to the conundrum of the whole steroid era, the uncertainly about who did what and when and to what degree using PED’s enhanced the career statistics that are the bedrock of a Cooperstown case. The mere presence of Rodriguez on the ballot this year may well be a factor in moving Bonds’ and Clemens’ numbers upwards. There is a growing realization among the BBWAA members that it is highly likely that a PED user is already in the Hall of Fame and that many might very well be about to elect another one. If more cracks form in Cooperstown’s PED wall, the rationale to keep out two of the greatest players in the history of the game begins to diminish.

 

Manny Ramirez,  Sammy Sosa, Gary Sheffield, and Rafael Palmeiro:

Perhaps the biggest sign that the Cooperstown PED wall is crumbling is the fact that Manny Ramirez has earned nearly 30% of the early vote despite being the game’s first two-time PED suspension loser to ever appear on the Hall of Fame ballot.

We all remember Rafael Palmeiro wagging his finger at a congressional committee in early 2005, vowing that he had never taken steroids, just months before he became by far the most high-profile player to fail a PED test, a failure that resulted in a 10-game suspension and the end of his career. Palmeiro debuted on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2011 and got just 11% of the vote, something he later referred to as a “knife in the back.” Three years later, his vote totaled 4.4% and he was drummed off the ballot permanently.

Palmeiro was an excellent, consistent hitter, and also extremely durable. That durability kept him in the lineup for over 150 games per season in every non-strike-shortened campaign and allowed him to compile 569 home runs and 3,020 hits, both benchmarks that would have normally guaranteed him a place in the Hall of Fame.

Except for his personal tragedy of the failed test in his last MLB campaign in 2005. If Palmeiro had simply not played (and not been tested) in 2005, he might very well have been viewed in the same way that his teammate Ivan Rodriguez is being viewed now. The bitter irony for Palmeiro is that, like Rodriguez, he was named in Jose Canseco’s books but the difference is that Rodriguez never failed a drug test.

Sammy Sosa hit the ballot, with Bonds, Clemens, and Piazza in that fateful 2013 shutout. While Piazza scored 58% of the vote and Bonds and Clemens were in the high 30’s, Sosa got just 12.5% of that vote. In the three years that followed, the BBWAA voters have not been very, very good to him. Slammin’ Sammy has finished with between 6% and 7% in the last three voting cycles, despite his 609 career home runs and being the only player to hit over 60 taters in three separate seasons. Let’s remember that, although he was also named in Canseco’s books and was called in front of Congress, Sosa never failed a test under the league’s drug-testing policy and was not named in the Mitchell Report on steroids, although his name was leaked to the New York Times as having failed a “survey” test in 2003, the testing regimen that led to the creating of the sport’s drug-testing program.

If you’re wondering why, as Bonds and Clemens watch their voting numbers surge, that Sosa’s are stagnant, it’s simply that he wasn’t in their league as a player. As we’ve chronicled, Bonds and Clemens were Hall of Fame players before they ever used steroids, assuming the well-established timelines are to be believed. Sosa’s Cooperstown qualifications rests squarely on a five-year run of a ridiculous home run tear in which he slugged 292 bombs in a five year period, an average of 58 per year. Sammy Sosa is not getting into Cooperstown because of a lack of authenticity of the numbers that would normally give him the key to the Hall. Sosa had not shown that he was a Hall of Fame talent prior to the great home run chase of 1998 and since nobody believes that his 60-dinger years weren’t chemically enhanced, he is viewed harshly by the voters.

Gary Sheffield (another member of the 500 home run club) joined the party on the 2015 ballot and got just 12% of the vote, a number he would repeat one year later. Unlike Sosa, Sheffield was actually named in the Mitchell Report and was part of the BALCO investigation into Bonds. Sheff actually admitted that he had used a substance called “the clear,” which was a rubbing cream that he says he didn’t realize was actually a steroid.

Sheffield is in McGwire’s boat, sort of. Sheff has admitted using PED’s but, unlike Big Mac, he has claimed he didn’t know what he was taking. Given the fact that players are not chemists, it’s not unreasonable to assume that some of them may have used steroids without realizing it but there’s no way to know this. Sheffield was an excellent hitter for a long period of time but, given the overflow of Cooperstown-worthy players currently on the ballot and his BALCO tie, it’s reasonable that voters are not putting him in their top 10.

Anyway, of these four sluggers, Ramirez seems to be getting the most love from the BBWAA voters despite the fact that he is the guy with two failed tests under his belt. How to explain this? The answer is in the numbers. Take a look:

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It’s kind of simple, eh? Of these four PED-tarnished sluggers, Manny Ramirez was the best, and it isn’t really that close. His batting average, on-base% and slugging% (what we call the “slash line”) were all significantly better than the others. And, although it’s fair to note that Ramirez was blessed with hitting in some powerhouse lineups in Cleveland and Boston, he accumulated just 4 fewer RBI than Palmeiro in over 2,000 fewer plate appearances, the equivalent of three full seasons!

I’ve heard many people refer to Ramirez as the best right-handed hitter they ever saw (although Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera certainly could get into that conversation). Since Manny’s two failed tests occurred at the tail-end of his career and it’s rational to believe that he’s just a few ticks below Bonds and Clemens in the “no doubt” camp. Still, Ramirez was a mediocre defensive player and not always a great teammate.

 

Anyway, like Palmeiro, Sosa and Sheffield, Manny Ramirez is not getting into the Hall of Fame anytime soon. As a two-time loser in the drug testing regime, it’s surprising that he has as many voters backing him as he does. It speaks to the sentiment that many of them feel, which I share, which is that Manny didn’t need PED’s to be a Hall of Fame talent, that he’s a cut below Bonds and Clemens but a significant cut above the other PED-linked players. He was an unstoppable force at the plate and never out of an at bat (he hit 192 home runs with two strikes on him).

If I were a BBWAA member and I had a ballot this year, Manny Ramirez would not make the cut. Gary Sheffield and Sammy Sosa wouldn’t make it either. The rules limit any voter to 10 players per ballot. I don’t feel that Sheffield and Sosa are in the top 10.

Now, if I were ranking players purely for who they were on the field, I would put Ramirez right behind Bonds, Clemens and I-Rod. But with so many other worthy names to consider, I wouldn’t vote for him this year.

 

With the induction of Mike Piazza last year and the likely induction of Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez this year, there will now be three significant cracks in Cooperstown’s PED wall. There is no proof that any of those three were users but a great many people are convinced that they did it any voted for them anyway. For many years, writers have argued that being in the baseball Hall of Fame is an honor and that voting for that honor does not need to follow the maxim of jurisprudence in a court of law that one is “innocent until proven guilty.” In the shutout of 2013, voters rendered a “guilty until proven innocent” verdict on Piazza and Bagwell but that hard-line position has evaporated.

If you’re a voter and you believe that the Hall of Fame already contains PED users, it’s harder to justify excluding two of the best players in history. Thus, it’s now likely that in one to three years, you’ll see Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on stage together on a hot summer day in upstate New York, finally joining the exclusive club to which they clearly belong by their excellence on the field. That day will signal that the PED wall of Cooperstown, which is showing a few cracks, has started to come crumbling down.

 

Thanks for reading.

Chris Bodig