2021 Baseball Hall of Fame Class

Bonds and Clemens to start.

 

Bonds and Clemens will go in next year -- its obvious that will be the penance for their transgressions.

The next five years are going to end up being:

2021 -- Schilling
2022 -- Bonds, Clemens, Ortiz
2023 -- Vizquel
2024 -- Beltre, Beltran, Rolen
2025 -- Ichiro, Sabathia

 

If Bonds had retired the day he took his first steroid, he’d have been a first ballot HOFer. That’s where I start.

 

You have no idea when he took his first steroid. Or when any of the so called clean ones did.

 

I’m reasonably confident that Barry Bonds, clean, had a Hall of Fame skill set. As did Clemens. Let them in, and engrave on their plaques the reasons why it took so long.

As for the rest of that ballot? Not great. But I’d vote without reservation for Andruw Jones and Curt Schilling, and I’d listen to the case for Helton, Pettitte, Sheffield and Manny.

 

Since baseball essentially sanctioned cheating with the wrist-slap administered to the Astros for cheating their way to a World Series title, can we just stop with the "integrity" bullshit and let everybody in? Including Rose. This sport has no integrity. None. Rose is banned for gambling, yet the holy temple of Fenway Park has a giant ad for a Casino on the Green Monster. Gambling plays a huge role in major sports' existence. Rose should be its poster boy, not some pariah. Baseball needs to get over itself.

 

A poster boy for gambling on games he was managing?

I mean we need to get over being prudes about legal betting but c'mon.

 

Yeah - I kind of draw the line at Rose. Does he have a plaque in there as a player? I'm an advocate for the "warts and all" kind of thing, where you give them the plaque, but you also note that he was banned from working in baseball because he was gambling on his own team.

All of the steroid guys though, don't really care, let 'em in. We have little indication of who did and didn't use - Derek Jeter could have been on the junk, and we wouldn't really know, except that his dealer can keep his records better hidden than A-Rod's. The baseball HoF already has a slew of guy who used greenies and spitballs to rack up wins, and as time goes on, we're going to get into grayer and grayer areas with all of this. Already, you can sometimes use HGH to come back from an injury, but what if it turns out it prevents injury with minimal side effects? Does that count as an "unfair" advantage? It's going to get worse as we learn more about human genetics, and while this is mostly going to be good news - more effective treatments for a slew of things - it's also going to lead to questions like, "Does a vitamin that lets you workout three times a day count as cheating?"

 

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In my mind Abreu is as worthy as Baines, not that either ought to be in if the Hall worked anymore.

Abreu swiped 400 bags in his career. That's pretty unusual for a middle-of-the-order hitter, and in a fairly dead time for stolen bases.

 

The big question with "cheating" and "steroids" is that once MLB actually decided to take a stand and institute testing, that seems like a distinct dividing line.

Before -- with Bonds, Clemens -- there was no way to prove who was or wasn't using. After that, when positive tests carried a punishment, you have proof who was caught using. So to me, Manny, A-Rod and others are substantially different than Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, etc.

 

He got 4,256 hits. Good enough for me. All this integrity crap is pretty weightless when you basically acknowledge a team cheating its way to a title, and guys cheated their way to hallowed records, was no big deal. People don't want Rose in because he's an asshole. And he is. Same reason Albert Belle isn't in. Media babies didn't like him.