The Hall of Fame Class of 2015

Earlier today, for the first time since exactly 60 years ago when Joe DiMaggio and 3 others were chosen, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) elected four new members to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio will be enshrined into Cooperstown’s exclusive club this summer.

As it was a year ago with the induction of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, this is a great day for baseball.  There has been so much understandable angst and debate about the bloated Hall of Fame ballot after the electoral shutout that occurred two years ago when no players were elected to the Hall despite the first time presence of names like Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Piazza, Biggio and Schilling and the existing names like Bagwell, Morris, Raines, McGwire, Palmeiro and many others.  There was a universal feeling that the shutout of 2013 was a protest vote, a collective shunning of players from the entire steroid era, guilty or not.

Since that shutout, there’s been a feeling of crisis that there are too many quality players on the ballot and certainly that’s true but next year, for the first time in several years, the ballot will still be packed with great players but not to the same degree as it has been for the last two voting cycles.

Here’s a look at the voting breakdown, with a full breakdown of all of the statistics available at

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2015.shtml

Player
Votes
% of Votes
 Yrs on Ballot



Randy Johnson
534
97.3%
1st


Pedro Martinez
500
91.1%
1st


John Smoltz
455
82.9%
1st


Craig Biggio
454
82.7%
3rd


Mike Piazza
384
69.9%
3rd


Jeff Bagwell
306
55.7%
5th


Tim Raines
302
55.0%
8th


Curt Schilling
215
39.2%
3rd


Roger Clemens
206
37.5%
3rd


Barry Bonds
202
36.8%
3rd


Lee Smith
166
30.2%
13th


Edgar Martinez
148
27.0%
6th


Alan Trammell
138
25.1%
14th


Mike Mussina
135
24.6%
2nd


Jeff Kent
77
14.0%
2nd


Fred McGriff
71
12.9%
6th


Larry Walker
65
11.8%
5th


Gary Sheffield
64
11.7%
1st


Mark McGwire
55
10.0%
9th


x-Don Mattingly
50
9.1%
15th


Sammy Sosa
36
6.6%
3rd


Nomar Garciaparra
30
5.5%
1st


x-Carlos Delgado
21
3.8%
1st


Others receiving votes: Troy Percival, Tom Gordon, Aaron Boone, Darin Erstad
x-ineligible for future ballots

This is a special day and honor for the four elected players and, in a strange way, also good news for some of the other great players who were not able to muster 75% of the writers’ votes.  It’s good news for the class of “almost” or “not quite” because it starts to clear up the logjam of quality stars populating the annual balloting.

Because the BBWAA successfully elected seven new members in the last two ballots, next year’s ballot, while still crowded, will be joined by just one new entrant that will certainly be given an immediate wave through to Cooperstown (Ken Griffey Jr.).  Two others (Jim Edmonds and Trevor Hoffman) have excellent credentials but are not at the same level as many of the holdovers.

So, besides the happy news for the newest Cooperstown members, here are a few takeaways from this year’s election as it applies to the next year:

• Chicks may have used to dig the long ball, but the baseball writers no longer do. Besides the obvious cases of PED-linked Bonds, McGwire and Sosa, the writers also snubbed the 25th, 27th, and 31st most prolific home run hitters in the history of baseball.  Gary Sheffield, with 509 career taters, got just 12% of the vote in his first try (as indicated in a previous piece, Sheffield does have a link to PED’s but claimed he didn’t know that the “cream” he used on his knee was a steroid).  Fred McGriff, with 493 career bombs, still gets no love, earning just 13% of the ballot.  And Carlos Delgado, with 473 long balls in his career, is drummed off the ballot after just one year, earning just 3.8% of the vote.  Delgado is one of only six players in the history of baseball to hit 30 or more home runs for 10 consecutive seasons (the others are Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Albert Pujols, and Jimmie Foxx) but wasn’t good enough for a 2nd look by the writers.
• A controversial new rule, which limits a player’s eligibility on the ballot from 15 years to 10 may not necessarily keep as many deserving players out of the Hall as has been feared. There was much consternation last summer when the Hall of Fame board changed this rule; popular players such as Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter, Duke Snider, and Ralph Kiner were inducted by the BBWAA after more than 10 unsuccessful cycles.  However, there is nothing that creates a sense of urgency and focuses the mind like a looming deadline.  Tim Raines was one of the greatest leadoff hitters in baseball history but has languished on the ballot for years.  However, with this now being his third to last chance to get inducted, Raines (a cause celebre in the sabermetric community) saw his vote increase significantly from a year ago, tallying 55% of the vote compared to 46% in 2014.  This is the kind of surge which historically gives him a shot to get over the finish line two years later.
• A corollary to the above is the distinctive and obvious conclusion that most of the writers, as a collective group, feel the urgency of alleviating the voting backlog. For the second year in a row, more than half of the writers marked the maximum number of ten names on their ballots.  Take a look at the average number of votes used per writer in the last four election cycles:
  • 2014  — 8.42 votes/ballot
  • 2013  — 8.39
  • 2012  — 6.57
  • 2011  — 5.10

The 2011 vote featured the election of Barry Larkin but there were no mega-stars who joined the ballot (the best player was Bernie Williams).   The 2012 ballot included first time names Bonds, Clemens, Piazza, Sosa, Biggio and Schilling (with Maddux, Glavine, Thomas, Mussina and Kent joining the crowded party the next year).  What would really help Raines and others is if the Hall agrees to implement the writers’ recommendation to allow up to 12 votes per ballot.  This makes sense of course.  The limit has been 10 names since the inception of the Hall of Fame, but there were only 16 major league teams in 1936 and black players were not allowed to play.  In today’s game there are 30 teams so there are nearly double the number of players on a year-by-year basis so of course there are going to be more that are worthy of the Hall.  If a 12 name limit had in place this year, it might have saved Delgado from an early exit from the process.

• Curt Schilling and to a lesser extent Mike Mussina were aided by the presence of John Smoltz on the ballot. Both pitchers saw their support increase significantly, very likely in part that many voters, when comparing the three, couldn’t differentiate between their excellent careers.  Schilling’s support went from 29% to 39%, Mussina’s from 20% to 25%.
• The players linked to PED’s are not going to get in. You can forget it about it.  Mark McGwire got 10% of the vote, Sammy Sosa 7%.  And even though Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were two of the greatest players in baseball history, the support has been very consistent and steady at between 35% and 38%.  Each of them gained just four votes each.  The history of Hall of Fame voting shows that players can surge and drop in their vote totals as writers re-evaluate their careers over time.  But the Bonds and Clemens cases are clear-cut: you either vote for them because they were among the greatest ever or you don’t because of their steroid links.  There is no chance (none, in my opinion), that half of the “no” votes change their minds in the next 7 years.  A whopping 200 voters would have to change their minds on Clemens and Bonds in the next seven years.  A total of four changed their minds this year. So if you’re waiting for another 200 writers to go from “no” to “yes,” then you’re also waiting for world peace.
• As for the second tier of players who are merely suspected of using PED’s, the writers seem to be slowly softening on Mike Piazza but not on Jeff Bagwell. It may be as simple as the perception that Piazza, the most prolific home run hitting catcher in MLB history, is a more obvious choice.  Bagwell, despite a stunningly prolific and well-rounded offensive career, may be held back by “only” having hit 449 as a first baseman.
• There are still writers who don’t know what they’re doing. Randy Johnson deservedly got 97% of the vote while Pedro Martinez earned a “mere” 91%.  So I’m left to wonder this: who were the 34 writers who didn’t feel that Pedro was a Hall of Fame pitcher while the Big Unit was?  The only conclusion I can draw is that there are still writers who look only at milestone stats: Johnson had 303 career wins, while Pedro had only 219 despite 194 career fewer starts than the Unit.  Pedro’s 2.93 career ERA, pitching in the steroid era and many years in the rugged American League East, puts him in the same upper echelon of starters as Johnson.
• The rumors of Nomar Garciaparra’s demise (which I predicted yesterday) proved to be premature.  He barely eclipsed the minimum 5% vote threshold and will live to see another day on the Hall of Fame ballot.

So what does all of this mean going forward?  Here are the players who will be hitting the BBWAA ballots in the next five election cycles:

• 2016: Ken Griffey Jr., Jim Edmonds, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner
• 2017: Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Jorge Posada
• 2018: Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Scott Rolen, Andruw Jones, Johnny Damon, Johan Santana, Jamie Moyer, Omar Vizquel
• 2019: Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Roy Halladay, Todd Helton, Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Miguel Tejada
• 2020: Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, Paul Konerko, Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu (maybe)

Some predictions:

• Griffey Jr. will easily sail into Cooperstown with over 97% voting support. With 630 career home runs and 1,836 RBI and no PED suspicions whatsoever, he will be the only first ballot choice in 2016.
• Mike Piazza will join Griffey in the Hall’s Class of 2016. Piazza, the most prolific hitting catcher in baseball history, despite rumors and whispers (no links) to PED’s, has seen his support increase from 58% to 62% to 69.8% in three years on the ballot.  A 70% or near 70% vote almost always means a Hall of Fame plaque the following year.  Based on the total of 549 voting writers from this year, Piazza would need 28 to change their minds.
• Tim Raines and/or Curt Schilling will surge into “scoring position” on next year’s ballot and one (or both) will join the Hall of Fame Class of 2017, when the top two new candidates on the ballot (Ivan Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez) have been linked to PED’s. Ramirez in particular, who failed two drug tests, will get very little support despite being one of the greatest right-handed hitters in baseball history.
• Besides Schilling, Mike Mussina will also see a significant boost in his vote totals next year. The last two years have seen a historic level of top-tier starting pitchers on the ballot, with five new hurlers in the Hall.  There are no quality starting pitchers joining the ballot in either 2016 or 2017 so the field is wide open to Schilling and Mussina.  Many voters like to “balance” their ballots.  Other than Clemens, there simply won’t be any other starters worth voting for in the next two cycles so Schilling and Mussina will get more love.
• Jeff Kent will see a surge in his voting support next year. With Biggio now in Cooperstown, writers will more closely at how strong Kent’s resume is in comparison.  I think Kent will have a long road to Cooperstown and may not make it but he’ll gain a lot of votes next year.
• With Clemens and Bonds gaining no traction on this year’s ballot, some voters will drop them from their ballots next year, realizing the futility of voting for these two most controversial poster boys for the PED era. I thought this would happen this year, so maybe the two camps of this cold war will remain intractable.  Incidentally, if the Hall agrees to increase the limit on votes from 10 to 12, I believe that will have a negligible impact on Bonds and Clemens.  They’re either the top two names on any writers’ ballot or they’re not on it at all.
• If writers are allowed to vote for 12 players instead of the current 10-name limit, overlooked sluggers like Edgar Martinez and Fred McGriff (and possibly Larry Walker and Gary Sheffield) will see a boost in their support.
• Jim Edmonds appears on the ballot for the first time next year. With 393 home runs, a .903 OPS and eight Gold Gloves at a key defensive position, Edmonds was a perennial star on Baseball Tonight’s “Web Gems” with numerous spectacular defensive plays.  With the fame of his glove, solid offensive numbers, and a World Series ring, he could very well get a lot of support for Cooperstown.  The interesting thing here is that his career is remarkably similar to that of Larry Walker, who has been on the ballot for six years and has never earned more than 23% of the vote and earned just 12% this year.  Walker’s offensive numbers are superior to Edmonds’ and won seven Gold Gloves of his own but he played right field (not center) and didn’t have the defensive pizazz of Edmonds.  I would expect Edmonds to get double or even triple the support that Walker got this year.
• Trevor Hoffman, with 601 career saves (2nd most in history only to Mariano Rivera) also will be eligible for Cooperstown for the first time. How will the voters look at his resume compared to that of Lee Smith, who is 3rd all-time with 478 saves?  Smith, who began his career 13 years earlier, was a bridge between the “closers pitch multiple innings” era of the early 1980’s to the modern model where most closers rarely pitch more than just the 9th.  Smith has gained as much as 50% of the writers’ votes as recently as three years ago but has seen his support dwindle in the recent crowded ballots.  I would expect that a “2nd best ever to Mariano” factor will work in Hoffman’s favor and he’ll get a lot of votes (maybe 30%-to-40%) but will be hurt by a middling performance in several big moments.

So, if I were allowed the privilege of voting for the next Hall of Fame class, these would be the ten players I would choose (in order):

1. Ken Griifey Jr.
2. Curt Schilling
3. Jeff Bagwell
4. Tim Raines
5. Mike Piazza
6. Edgar Martinez
7. Fred McGriff
8. Mike Mussina
9. Jeff Kent
10. Gary Sheffield
11. Larry Walker (if 12 votes are permitted)
12. Alan Trammell (if 12 votes are permitted)

I’ve written this before: Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame, but they’re not getting in.  They should not take two spots on any ballot which denies a vote to other players that might still have a chance.

The most interesting aspect about next year’s Hall of Fame vote will be whether Piazza can climb over 75%.  If he does, that may be a tipping point in the debate about what to do about baseball’s steroid era.  There are many writers who believe that he and Bagwell were users, even though they were never linked to PED’s or named in George Mitchell’s exhaustive report on steroids.  With Bonds and Clemens, there are smoking guns and their out-of-this-world numbers work against them, despite the fact that they could have been in Cooperstown a decade ago if they had each retired in 1998.  If Piazza is inducted next year, that will be a sign the body of writers has moved to a “innocent until proven guilty” position rather than a “guilty if suspicious” stance.  While it will not open the floodgates to Cooperstown, it will make it OK for writers to vote for what they saw on the field and not what the didn’t see in the training room.