When it becomes this meaningful, there is bound to be impactful fallout.
The 2015 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voting results will be announced Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET, and if not much else, we already know that this ballot is one of the most intriguing in the history of the prestigious building at 25 Main St. in Cooperstown, New York.
This vote is likely to be the most accurate barometer concerning future tallies for controversial players like Barry Bonds and Rogers Clemens while also leading to changes in the voting process. It may also provide the baseball shrine with its largest class of inductees since 1936, the first year of balloting, one that brought in Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson.
The 2015 Baseball Writers’ Association of America vote, whether people realize it or not, will impact the system for years to come. And based on preliminary indications, we should already have an idea of what will happen not only Tuesday but also in the near future.
The PED Bunch
Since Mark McGwire hit the ballot in 2007, we have annually monitored how voters treat players known to have used or who have been suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs. McGwire debuted on the ballot with 23.5 percent of the vote before peaking at 23.7 in 2010. Since then, he has lost support each year to the point where it is unclear if he will get the necessary five percent of the vote to stay on the ballot for a 10th time.
Other PED guys have since become HOF eligible with much better candidacy credentials intact, most notably Bonds and Clemens. Both debuted on the ballot and got 36.2 and 37.6 percent, respectively, only to see those numbers drop in 2014, their second years of eligibility.
However, as time passes, views on PED use shift toward leniency and new BBWAA voters cast their first ballots, it is completely realistic to see upticks for the PED candidates. We are not just talking about Bonds and Clemens, either. Suspected players, fair or not, like Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell are likely to see their total votes rise.
Based on the ballots already made public on different forums, which have been tabulated by Baseball Think Factory and HOF tracker Ryan Thibs, we know right around a quarter of the ballots. Based on that thin sample, we know it is possible to see spikes for Bonds and Clemens. That also tells us it is a reasonable expectation to see both eventually inducted even with the HOF shrinking the number of years a player can be on the ballot from 15 to 10.
As for McGwire and Sosa, it appears their lack of great numbers is what is more likely to keep them out, not their PED links.
The Biggio-Piazza Redo
The Bonds-Clemens prediction is further supported by the fact that Thibs’ collection of ballots tells us that not only will Biggio and Piazza get in this year, they also will gain a significant amount of votes in 2015. Piazza, according to the public ballots, has already gained 17 votes, and that number stands to continue growing as voters realize just how worthy his numbers make him.
This is still a small sample size, though. As of Sunday evening, 140 ballots were made public, and Piazza had 79.3 percent of those. It won’t be too surprising to see the rest of the ballots drop Piazza’s total just under the required 75 percent line, making him this year’s Biggio. In fact, that outcome is more likely than Piazza getting in at this point.
Biggio missed the required 75 percent for induction by two votes last year despite his numbers being questionable for inclusion. With the ballot more stacked this year than in 2014, Biggio has lost support from some of the public voters—he lost votes from four voters who voted for him last year—but he has also gained 20 votes overall, including 11 votes from first-time balloters.
While Biggio will lose more votes because of newcomers like Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz, he will probably gain borderline voters partly because they don’t want to see him go through the heartbreak of barely missing the mark for a second consecutive year.
The No-Chance Boys
From Don Mattingly to McGwire, there are plenty of guys with no chance at induction, including first-timers like Nomar Garciaparra.
Included with those three will be guys like Sosa, Larry Walker, Gary Sheffield, Jeff Kent, Fred McGriff and Alan Trammell. Mattingly, Trammell and Lee Smith were grandfathered into the 15-year system, but others like McGriff are going to be hurt by having five fewer years of eligibility to grow their totals. This vote will be Mattingly’s 15th, and according to the votes made public thus far, he will struggle to repeat last year’s 8.2 percent.
One of the more polarizing guys on the ballot not linked to PEDs is Edgar Martinez, who is in his sixth year on the ballot and received 25.2 percent of the vote in 2014. Because he was a designated hitter for the majority of his career, he is being unfairly punished and will again be snubbed. He also isn’t gaining or losing any votes, which tells us he isn’t likely to come anywhere close to 75 percent in the next five ballots.
Just put #EdgarMartinez in the freaking Hall of Fame, and you never have to hear it from us again, K? Solid idea. Work on it.
— Megan Shear (@Section331) January 4, 2015
Changes to the Voting Process
There are few people, voters included, who do not believe at least minor tweaks need to happen to the HOF voting system. Whether it be voters who fail to take their votes seriously by not researching candidates, those who abstain from the process altogether as a way to protest or those who have a vote but haven’t covered a game in decades, the process is flawed at its membership.
Fixes have been suggested, but it is likely that the BBWAA and/or the Hall of Fame’s board of directors will drag their feet to make drastic changes. However, the BBWAA did suggest expanding the ballot from 10 players to 12, a result of the membership’s appointed committee doing a yearlong study of the voting process.
The change was recommended at last month’s MLB winter meetings. Considering the current logjam of viable candidates—we are strictly talking stats—the HOF would be wise to accept the recommendation.
Assuming that change is implemented for next year’s vote, we should expect it to be the lone adjustment for 2016. The removal of votes from current voters, some of whom are no longer covering the game or even working in sports, is not expected to happen anytime soon.
The unfortunate part of that is people no longer part of the game who have other career obligations cannot dedicate the necessary number of hours it takes to research and make thoroughly informed decisions on players.
While expanding the number of players on the ballot will help, that part of the process is only a minor problem for now.
What to Expect in 2016
With their vote totals on the rise this year, next year will be time to pop champagne for Piazza, Bagwell and Tim Raines. As research and statistics play a bigger role in not only the day-to-day coverage of games but also the HOF voting process, and as PED links start playing a lesser part in the voting, those three will get what they are due.
If this year’s class—Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Smoltz and Biggio at the least—can help clear the bottleneck on the ballot, it will open things up for someone like Raines, whose numbers are becoming more respected as we learn to better put them into context.
Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.
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