Baseball Hall of Fame: Class of 2015

Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Craig Biggio are in!!!

Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez are "inner circle" Hall of Famers and got huge numbers of votes and deservedly so. They both cleared 90%, and Johnson cleared 97%. (They both ought to be unanimous, but that is not how things work.) Biggio and Smoltz both got more than 80% of the vote --- at least 75% is what is required and made it easily as well. Smoltz deserves to be in the Hall of Fame but until I saw the early pre-announcement returns I didn't expect him to make it in his first year of eligibility. Biggio was in his third year of eligibility (and missed by 2 measly votes last year) and should have made it two years ago. (I am wearing my Plunk Biggio shirt today, of course.) Mike Pizza made major gains (garnering just under 70% of the vote), so I expect that he'll make it in 2016 along with Ken Griffey Jr. and maybe Trevor Hoffman. (The latter two make their debuts on the ballot next year.) Hopefully, Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, et al will continue to make some gains. Now with Smoltz in, things should bode well for Schilling and Mussina. Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines will likely have a more difficult time, but we'll see how things go.

You can find a couple of 2015 pre-announce ballot-counting efforts here and here.

ESPN now has a soon-to-be-expanded article on the results.

Update: The vote percentages for each player have now been posted. Surprisingly, Sammy Sosa got enough votes to stay on the ballot for 2016. I thought he was going to drop off. Nomar Garciaparra also surprisingly got enough votes to stay on next year's ballot. (Garciaparra had a superb career peak but not close to enough other good seasons to be a Hall of Famer.) Unfortunately, Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell, Curt Schilling, and Mike Mussina didn't gain as much as the early ballot polling suggested that they might. Schilling did make a big jump, but it was smaller than it at first seemed like it would be. Raines also had a nice jump, but again it was not as large as I was hoping.