[rtpoe]

Right. It's time. You've had plenty of time to debate the whole "PEDs" matter. Now it's time to actually vote.

Here are the players on the 2013 Baseball Writers Association of America Hall of Fame ballot.

You may vote for no more than ten. The BBWAA voters are given the following instructions:

"Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."

Players need to be selected 75% of all ballots received in order to be chosen, and they have fifteen years of eligibility on the ballot before going over to the various special committees. Players who get less than five percent of the votes are dropped from future ballots.

Here are the eligible players:

Sandy Alomar Jr.
Jeff Bagwell (2)
Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds
Jeff Cirillo
Royce Clayton
Roger Clemens
Jeff Conine 
Steve Finley                                     
Julio Franco                                       
Shawn Green                                   
Roberto Hernandez                                       
Ryan Klesko                                       
Kenny Lofton                                   
Edgar Martinez (3)
Don Mattingly (12)
Fred McGriff (3)
Mark McGwire (6)
Jose Mesa                                         
Jack Morris (13)
Dale Murphy (14)
Rafael Palmeiro (2)
Mike Piazza                                       
Tim Raines (5)
Reggie Sanders                               
Curt Schilling                                     
Aaron Sele                                         
Lee Smith (10)
Sammy Sosa                                     
Mike Stanton                                   
Alan Trammell (11)
Larry Walker (2)
Todd Walker                                     
David Wells                                       
Rondell White                                 
Bernie Williams (1)
Woody Williams

Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of years the player has been on the ballot.

I note that no player has ever been elected unanimously by the BBWAA. Not Henry Aaron, not Willie Mays, not Joe DiMaggio, not Jackie Robinson. Tom Seaver came closest, with 98.84%.

So, who are you voting for?

I'd cast my votes for

Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
Mike Piazza
Curt Schilling
Alan Trammel

[tdotter]

Jack Morris deserves to get in more than anyone on that list.Most wins by any pitcher in the 80's.3 World Series with 3 different teams.Won games when they mattered.Nuff said!

[mcgarp]

Jack Morris, hands down. GO (shitty) MN TWINS!

[rtpoe]

The deadline is getting close. And it's not looking good.

Baseball Think Factory has been keeping track of the publicly announced ballots. With 88 ballots (about 15%, and a statistically valid sample size) in, not one single player has reached the minimum 75% necessary for election:

69.3 - Biggio
67.0 - Bagwell
62.5 - Piazza
61.4 - Raines
61.4 - J. Morris
44.3 - Clemens
44.3 - Bonds
37.5 - Schilling
36.4 - Trammell
35.2 - L. Smith
33.0 - E. Martinez
18.2 - D. Murphy
17.0 - McGriff
15.9 - McGwire
14.8 - Raffy
13.6 - S. Sosa
13.6 - L. Walker
  5.7 - Mattingly

Baseball writers have been hashing out the whole PED thing in their articles. Some make a very good case that both Bonds and Clemens already had HOF-worthy careers before they were even suspected of using PEDs:

Bonds (1986-1999): .288 BA; 445 HR; 1,299 RBI; 460 Stolen bases. 3 MVP awards (1990, 1992, 1993)
Clemens (1984-1997): 213-118; 2.97 ERA; 2,882 K. 1 MVP award (1986), 4 Cy Young awards (1986, 1991, 1992, 1997)

Matt Snyder over at Eye on Baseball has some good thoughts on Bonds' career and HOF candidacy. He basically asks himself what would he have done in Bonds' position. It's the winter of 1998-1999. In 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both destroyed the single season home run record. Bonds, meanwhile, had another awesome season, hitting .308 with 37 HRs, 122 RBIs, and 28 stolen bases. Yet that was only good for eighth in the NL MVP voting. Eighth. Behind such superstars as Moises Alou, Greg Vaughn, and Andres Galarraga. What if that winter, suggests Snyder, Bonds said to himself,

You know what, I had a helluva season last year, and nobody gave a crap. Nobody. As much as I've complained about McGwire and (Jose) Canseco and all of the bull with steroids, I'm tired of fighting it. I've got three or four good seasons left, and I wanna get paid. I'm just gonna start using some hard-core stuff, and hopefully it won't hurt my body. Then I'll get out of the game and be done with it. (from Jeff Pearlman's book, "Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero")

Before you say you'd never do that, or everyone was taking PEDs of some sort so it doesn't matter, or other players throughout baseball history cheated - so no big deal, or not one single cheater should be enshrined... well, you (most likely) aren't a professional baseball player.

Let me change it to something perhaps a bit closer to home.

You work with a couple of other guys. Let's call them Tom, Dick, and Harry. You're all about equally good at your job. Or if you're in school, you're all a solid B+ or 3.5 GPA.

Tom is a real brown-noser. It's annoying how he always sucks up to the boss. Volunteers for overtime, runs errands for people, buys donuts for the office... Does everything he can to put himself in a positive light.

Dick might just be a little bit better at work than the rest of you, but he's a real asshole. "Borrows" things from other people's desks, pads his expenses, takes an extra donut or three, is always a few minutes late for everything... Never crosses the line into something you can make an official complaint about, but GOD he's so damn irritating!

Harry, well, Harry seems to be the hardest worker amongst all of you. Then you discover, completely by accident, that he's taking some unusual medication. The drug has a valid use, but Harry's doesn't have whatever the drug is used for. What it does give him is increased alertness, better concentration, and a little more energy. Sure, it's got side effects (let's say things like insomnia and constipation), and there are problems when you stop taking it (how about increased anxiety and occasionally severe headaches), and though there haven't been any studies on the effects of long-term usage of this drug, some medical experts are very concerned... And it's so new that your company's drug policy has absolutely nothing to say about it.

Now let's say that there's an opportunity for a promotion or a bonus coming up. And all four of you are eligible. What do you do?

What do you do??

"Wouldn't you at least think about using? Would you use? I can only speak for myself, but my honest answer to the latter question is I don't have the first damn clue." - Matt Snyder

(Note: That drug Harry's taking? Lots of college students are taking ritalin and other drugs used to treat ADHD to help them study better....(1) (2) And it's starting to appear in the workplace...)

[tdotter]

^I know the list is speculation but it's a crime that Fred Mcgriff is that low.Look how many 30 hrs and 100 RBI seasons he had.Also,I'm very certain he was one player that was never on the juice and he speculates that could be a reason he doesn't get votes.I saw him when he first started with the Blue Jays as a tall,skinny guy and he smashed the ball.He hit a homer at Yankee Stadium in his 1st or 2nd year (around 88-89)that even people that worked for the Yankees said was one of the longest they had ever seen there.

[tdotter]

Today is the announcement.According to Espn,they predict that only Craig Biggio will get voted in.They think Jack Morris will get a few votes less than last year.That's too bad because if he doesn't get voted in next year then he is taken off the ballot.

[SwitcherX]

Noone got in this year.

[mastert]

I think it's ridiculous that Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell didn't get in. Piazza's the greatest hitting catcher of all time and is responsible for the renaissance of the hitting catcher. Jeff Bagwell hit at least 200 home runs in the cavern that was the Astrodome.These baseball writers are so full of themselves

[pedonbio]

Noone got in this year.

It makes sense to me. Look, this isn't a "who gets to stay in the lifeboat" exercise. Canseco and Alex Rodriguez should both be forever excluded solely because they are assholes. And Barry Bonds is living proof that, whatever other effects PEDs may have, they made him less of an asshole.

[rtpoe]

I get the feeling that part of the problem is that voters get to pick no more than ten players on their ballot. This year, the field was just too crowded. I count at least seven players with very good cases for inclusion, and that's not even counting Bonds and Clemens. So with ten votes to spread out over more than ten good candidates, it was going to be a tough year for anyone.

The good news is that so many of the really good candidates that didn't make it this time will have another chance next year.

The bad news is that next year, the ballot will have around 45 names on it, including Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina, Frank Thomas, and Tom Glavine....

[tdotter]

Reading some articles from baseball writers ,who are also voters,is downright nauseating.They write about their votes as if they are voting who becomes the next US president or something.Some of these guys need to take a pill and relax.In the end,it's just voting for a sporting accomplishment.

[rtpoe]

And when your vote is only one of over 500, everything averages out well enough.

To add on to my thoughts above of how crowded the ballot is going to be in the coming years, here's a list of who's going to be showing up in the next couple of years:

2014 - Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina.
2015 - Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz
2016 - Ken Griffey Jr, Trevor Hoffman
2017 - Vladimir Guerrero, Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez
2018 - Chipper Jones
Soon after: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jim Thome

Each and every one a legitimate "first ballot" Hall of Famer. I wonder how many inductions the HOF can handle in a single year...

Anyway, as someone who has actually been to the place, I kind of have to disagree with some of the things I've been reading. We all know there are people who have plaques on the wall of the "Hall of Fame" part of the HOF who probably don't belong there. One can make the case is that the *actual* Hall of Famers are the players who have their own display cases in the huge section of the Museum that covers the history of the game. People like Stan Musial have a replica locker filled with their stuff, while players like Phil Niekro have just a cap and a glove in the section covering their "general era". Heck, Babe Ruth gets his own frickin' ROOM.... So when you explore the *entire* place, you get a sense of who they *really* think are the "Hall of Famers".

Oh, and the stuff about "Cheaters don't belong in the Hall".... The attached photo is of George Brett's "locker". Being one of the greatest third basemen of all time, he deserves his own special display case. It's hard to see the text on the panel, but that is the infamous "Pine Tar Bat". Yeah, the rules governing the case were kind of silly, but nonetheless, since he was using an illegal bat, Brett was cheating. And both he and the bat wound up in the Hall of Fame....

[TheZookie007]

Due to the cheating revelations, should the World Series win of the Houston Astros be negated and the title be deemed vacant this year? There is precedent for that happening in the past.

[rtpoe]

Due to the cheating revelations, should the World Series win of the Houston Astros be negated and the title be deemed vacant this year? There is precedent for that happening in the past.

NO.

We all saw it happen. And it wasn't sign stealing that caused Cody Bellinger to throw the ball to El Monte, thereby starting the scoring for the Astros in the first inning of Game 7. Nor did any sign stealing have anything to do with the Dodgers going 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position in that game. The Dodgers had their chances to win - they just blew it.

And punishing the team or the players this year is punishing players who weren't part of the 2017 team!