2017 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

That is the assumption, unless Thome ends up being forced to wait a year.

After Chipper and Thome, there a bunch of interesting first-timers -- Jones, Rolen, Vizquel and Johan Santana.

 

The big thing this year was that almost all of the 10-ballot people get an extra spot -- their Bagwell and Raines votes go to Chipper and Thome. The question is where do they go with the Pudge slot?

 

Only God (and Jose Conseco) knows!

 

Happy for Raines. He was my Little Feat of Cooperstown. So obviously great yet too many fools voting.

Zelig got in, the person who profited the most from roids. MLB can get all high and mighty about PEDs but they didn't give a nickel back from the increased fan interest as 'Chicks dig the long ball'. Bonds and Clemens deserve to get in. As does Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose.

 

I'm with you on all them except Jackson, who admitted to a grand jury he took $5,000 to lose the World Series on purpose.

That disqualifies you in my book.

 

Except for the fact there's a lot of people who you can legitimately vote for this year, why didn't Hoffman get in? IIRC only Rivera was better and never heard of him being linked to roids.

 

Hoffman will get in any time. Some people probably realized that and voted for others.

 

There is a good percentage of voters who don't view relievers as Hall of Famers. Another chunk won't vote for them when there are more deserving candidates on the ballot. Even with that, he gained 31 votes from last year in the same number of ballots and that seven percent is a pretty normal rise. It also didn't help that a lot of people who had full ballots last year only had two candidates drop off and had two worthy candidates essentially take those openings.

I posted a view pages ago that those who want others down the voting to get in do themselves a disservice by not pushing Hoffman over the line and getting him off the ballot, allowing those slots to go to the down ballot guys. It was similar to what happened to Biggio in 2014 -- he fell two votes shy after his first try and guys dropped him for others thinking he'd sail in thanks to others. Oops. That pushed back three hundred slots for other guys.

 

Oh and anyone who tells you they look at the ballot and can't find multiple people to vote for is full of shit. The top 7 guys on the 2015 ballot are now in the Hall of Fame.

 

Really interesting start to Ken Rosenthal's recap column:

Shortly after the announcement of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2017, I received a text from a former major leaguer.

“Two of the three did steroids, so I don’t understand this process,” the former player said, referring to Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez, whose use of performance-enhancing drugs is suspected by many, but not confirmed.

I replied that it became more difficult to exclude such players after the election a year ago of another suspected user, Mike Piazza.

“OK, then how are Bonds and Clemens not in there?” the former player replied. “Pudge gets in first ballot? Crazy?”

 

The plethora of really good players on the ballot are causing a back log for sure and it doesn't help that guys who would have come off already are going to stay there because of roids. I just think regardless of what you think of a reliever, being one of two or three guys who not just excelled in the closer role but will forever be the bench mark for all other closers has to be in the hall. Fingers crossed for next year.

 

It's the same thing with Edgar -- there is a large portion of voters who won't vote for him because he's a DH.