TORONTO, Ont. – Voting to induct members into the hallowed Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York is restricted to members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America with 10 or more years of membership, so unlike my fine colleagues Jeff Blair and Shi Davidi, I don’t have the privilege of a Hall of Fame vote. I’m not even a member of the BBWAA, let alone one with a decade in. But with the announcement of the writers’ Class of 2015 coming Tuesday afternoon, I wanted to share with you how my ballot would have looked were I allowed to submit one.
Ballots many include as few as zero and as many as 10 names, and a player must be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots submitted in order to gain membership in the hall.
While politics can often be at play, and there are some self-important buffoons who refuse to ever vote for a player in his first year on the ballot (after all, Joe DiMaggio didn’t get on in his first try!), my opinion is that if you were among the best of the best when you played, you should be in the Hall of Fame. It’s hardly that simple, though. At first glance, there were fifteen people I would want to put on my ballot:
Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Randy Johnson, Jeff Kent, Edgar Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, John Smoltz and Larry Walker. Alan Trammell probably deserves to be on that list, too, but with this kind of crowd he was never going to make it into the top ten.
Five of them have got to go, fairly or unfairly. Speaking of fairly or unfairly, I should note here that I don’t think it’s appropriate to make ballot choices based on who one thinks did or didn’t take steroids. There are a few reasons for this.
First of all, we have NO idea who was clean. We may think we do, and there are certainly players who were never implicated in any steroid controversies at all, but some of them still looked like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, some of them still produced eye-popping numbers and some of them took steroids. There’s no way to know who did and who didn’t, and to an extent, people who were better at hiding their cheating are being rewarded.
As well, note the final word in the name of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It’s not the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Things That Are All Shiny and Happy. The Steroid Era is part of baseball’s history, and shouldn’t be ignored. I have no problem at all with a Hall of Fame plaque reading “Implicated in the Steroid Controversy of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.” True is true, whether we like that truth or not.
So, time to eliminate a third of my ballot, since for some strange and unknown reason somebody once said there’s a limit of ten and no one has changed that yet. The easiest way to cull the herd, I guess, is to first pick out the players who were absolute, no doubt, one-thousand percent Hall of Famers. Top tier guys.
For me, those are Bonds, Clemens, Johnson, Pedro, McGwire, Piazza and Raines. Seven of them.
All should be obvious, though I understand there are some revisionist historians who believe McGwire was a one-dimensional “home run or bust” player who would have been a bubble Hall of Famer even without the steroid issue. The truth is, though, that along with his 583 home runs, McGwire also posted a .394 career on-base percentage – so there are only 80 players in Major League history who were more difficult to get out than he was. He also won a Gold Glove, for whatever that’s worth.
Bonds may well have been the greatest player ever, Johnson may well have been the greatest left-handed pitcher ever, Pedro was just stupid, Piazza was the greatest offensive catcher in history, Clemens has an argument for being a top-5 righty all-time, and Raines was the second-greatest lead-off man in history, behind only Rickey Henderson.
I feel as though I need to pause here to make the case for Raines, even though it’s too late to sway anyone who has an actual vote. The fact that Tim Raines has already been on the Hall of Fame ballot seven times without being elected is one of the greatest reasons to change the voting process for the Hall of Fame. To not believe Raines is a Hall of Famer is to have absolutely no clue how baseball works.
The late, great Tony Gwynn was named on 97.6 percent of the ballots in 2007, his first year of eligibility. That’s the fifth-highest percentage in history behind Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Cal Ripken, Jr. and George Brett. Gwynn was an incredible singles hitter, maybe the best ever, and has seven batting titles to his credit. There is no question whatsoever that he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Gwynn hit .338/.388/.459 over his illustrious 20-year career. Tim Raines hit .294/.385/.421 over his 23-year career. There’s a three-point difference in on-base percentage because while Gwynn was great at blading base hits over the shortstop’s head, Raines was great at taking walks. And if you give Raines an extra half-base for the 468 more net stolen bases (SB-CS) he had than Gwynn, that slugging percentage goes up to .478. Why only a half-base? Well, a single and a stolen base with a runner on second doesn’t necessarily drive in a run, while a double does, so it’s not the same. It’s probably worth more than a half-base, but let’s be conservative.
Both Gwynn and Raines were fantastic at not getting out – and at basically the same rate – but they did it in different ways. Voters were falling all over themselves to get Gwynn in, but Raines peaked at 52.2 percent in 2013, actually slipping back to 46.1 percent last year. It’s shameful.
The Great Jonah Keri probably put it best, as two of the reasons Raines isn’t seen as automatic are the facts that he fell just short of the magical 3,000 hit mark, and that he wasn’t a career .300 hitter. Keri suggests that we take 1,000 of Raines’ walks and turn 400 of them into bunt singles and 600 of them into outs. Bunt singles, remember, rarely provide any more offence than do walks.
With that change in his numbers, Raines reaches 3,005 career hits. His career batting average goes up to .324. And he is also A MUCH WORSE OFFENSIVE PLAYER! Yet he would most assuredly have gone into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. With his actual (better) numbers, since he only has two years left after this ballot, Raines will likely not make it in without help from what used to be called the Veterans’ Committee. It’s sheer and unadulterated insanity.
Yes, Raines had a cocaine problem in the early 1980s. So did Paul Molitor, and it didn’t stop Molitor from being elected to the Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible.
So that’s seven, and I don’t want to vote politically, leaving, say, Pedro and Johnson off my ballot because I know they’ll get voted in regardless. Of the eight that remain, I feel like I need to vote for Edgar Martinez and Walker.
Edgar was the greatest DH of all-time, and I don’t believe it should be a punishable offence to have been a designated hitter. David Ortiz will go in the first time he’s eligible despite being a DH and a steroid cheat, because he’s David Ortiz. As long as the designated hitter exists in baseball, designated hitters should be allowed in the Hall of Fame. How many people on this Hall of Fame ballot had a career batting average over .300, a career on-base percentage over .400 and a career slugging percentage over .500? One. Edgar Martinez hit .312/.418/.515. How many ever in the modern era? 20. And of those eligible, how many are in the Hall of Fame? All of them, save Edgar Martinez.
Larry Walker doesn’t make that list only because his career on-base percentage was an even .400, as opposed to over .400. An all-time great and one of the rare true five-tool players, Walker isn’t in the Hall of Fame because he spent just over half of his 17-year career playing his home games in the hitters’ haven that is Denver, Colorado. Not his fault. Major League Baseball has a team that plays in Colorado and therefore people who played on that team should be eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Walker hit .313/.400/.565 for his career, played incredible defence in the outfield and was a brilliant baserunner and high-percentage base stealer. Yes, he hit .381/.462/.710 at Coors Field. It’s not his fault his team played its home games there. And it’s not as though his Rockies’ teammates put up those kinds of numbers, either.
That leaves one spot on my ballot, and I have to choose from Bagwell, Biggio, Delgado, Kent, Schilling and Smoltz. It’s an incredibly difficult choice to make. The argument could be made that Kent was the best offensive second baseman ever, and I do believe he’s a Hall of Famer. I want to vote for Delgado, because I saw him ‘murdalize’ pitchers with great regularity over most of his career. But Delgado’s eight-year peak (1998-2005) saw him hit .293/.407/.580 while Bagwell hit .297/.408/.540 over his entire career. Aside from innings pitched and, therefore, wins, Schilling’s numbers stand up with Tom Glavine’s, who went in last year on his first try, and Smoltz was an animal both as a starter and a closer and, like Schilling, a sensational post-season performer. Biggio has the magic number of 3,000 hits.
Politically, Delgado needs my vote more than the rest of them, because he’s the one who’s likeliest to be in danger of missing the cut to even remain on the ballot much longer. But does Delgado really belong in the Hall of Fame? Maybe. Probably. I’m not completely sure. I’m sure that Kent and Smoltz do.
Kent’s poor defence pushes him down a notch – he’d be 11th on my list. The final vote goes to Smoltz.
If I had a ballot, it would read Bonds, Clemens, Johnson, Martinez, Martinez, McGwire, Piazza, Raines, Smoltz, Walker. It’ll be stunning if more than three of them are elected this year.