My Hypothetical 2014 MLB Hall of Fame Ballot

Results for this year's round of Major League Baseball Hall of Fame balloting are due to be announced on Wednesday (January 8).  I don't have a ballot for the Hall of Fame, but every year I take a few moments on this blog to indicate what I would do if I did have the ballot.  Each year, I suggest the same refrain:  The limitation of voting for only 10 players is insufficient because I would vote for more than 10, and so I indicate what I would do if I could vote for more than 10. This year is no different.  Indeed, because the ballot is so stacked, this year exacerbates that very problem.

With that in mind, if I had the ability to vote for Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame, and if I could vote for as many players as I wished, I would vote for 24 players.  That would include all 17 players who are holdovers from last year, and for an explanation of my reasoning on those 17 players, see last year's blog post.  That list of players includes (in alphabetical order) Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, Lee Smith, Sammy Sosa, Alan Trammell, and Larry Walker.

Of the individuals new to the ballot this year, four to me are no-brainers:  Tom Glavine, Jeff Kent, Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas.  All of them have Hall-of-Fame numbers that stack up well against their peers, both their contemporary peers and their historical peers.  Mike Mussina is very close to that list as well, though his career does suffer a little when compared against the other four.  So, he would elicit a brief second thought, but in the end I find that he remains quite worthy of the Hall of Fame.  Those five bring my list to 22 players.

The remaining two players whom I would add are Moises Alou and Luis Gonzalez. 

I need to admit that Luis Gonzalez was, for years, my favorite major-league baseball player, so I have to try to account for a bias that would come with my consideration of his candidacy.  Still with over 2500 hits, over 350 homeruns, a ranking of number 15 on the all-time list for doubles, and a famous game-winning hit to win a World Series, Gonzalez stacks up quite nicely against other players whom I deem worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Moises Alou falls behind Luis Gonzalez in most major statistical categories (the major exception is batting average), and in the end it makes him a much more marginally electable candidate.  However, with a .303 lifetime average, 332 homeruns, and 2,134 hits, I find Alou just worthy enough to merit election.  So, he would be the last person to make my unlimited ballot.

I would also give serious consideration to Ray Durham and Kenny Rogers.  For Durham, having over 2,000 hits as a second basemen is a positive aspect of his candidacy, but with a lifetime .277 batting average and nothing else that particularly distinguishes him, he doesn't quite make it.  Rogers had over 200 wins, finishing with 219, which works in his favor, but with an ERA of 4.27 and nothing else that particularly distinguishes him either, like Durham, Rogers misses the cut.

I would give a little extra consideration to Hideo Nomo because of his success in Japan before his career in the United States as well as the significance of his move to the U.S.  However, in the end, with a won-loss record of 123-109 and a 4.24 ERA, he didn't quite do enough in the U.S. to make my ballot.

Meanwhile, while I looked at the careers of Armando Benitez, Sean Casey, Greg Gagne, Jacque Jones, Todd Jones, Paul Lo Duca, Richie Sexson, J. T. Snow, and Mike Timlin, all fall well short of making my ballot.

In the end, then, I have 24 players on this ballot for whom I would wish to vote.  Since the ballot only allows for 10 names, when forced to narrow the list down, I don't know how I ever would.  I can very painfully and extremely reluctantly narrow it to 14 (Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Glavine, Kent, Maddux, McGriff, McGwire, Palmeiro, Piazza, Raines, Sosa, and Thomas), and there isn't a single name on that list that I can see worth cutting.  (I suppose if pushed enough I would take off McGriff, Bagwell, Raines, and McGwire to get to 10, but that would be extremely painful and worrisome to do so.)  Given the trouble I have with this, I can imagine that the real voters are having significant difficulties, and in the end some potentially deserving candidates may fall off the ballot forever by not getting at least 5 percent of the votes.  To a significant degree, though, as a group the voters have brought this on themselves by keeping folks on the ballot who could have been voted in on previous ballots. 

Perhaps this all shows how much of a farce the whole thing might be -- declaring some individuals worthy of merit and others not, and then adding in all kinds of judgments about performance-enhancement.  And maybe it's worth not even doing this exercise on my blog any longer.  I guess I have a year to consider that option, so as Brooklyn Dodgers fans would have said in a different capacity, I will "wait 'til next year ..."