Well, we have some spiffy
new baseball Hall of Famers: Mariano Rivera, Edgar Martinez, Roy Halladay, and Mike Mussina!
This awesome foursome — and I am very pleased about all four of these elections — join Lee Smith and (sigh) Harold Baines, who were
elected by the Today's Game Era Committee last month. Rivera, in his first year of eligibility, is the
first ever unanimous selection, although there are other luminaries who should already have gotten this distinction years ago. Sadly, the late Roy Halladay (who
died tragically in a 2017 plane crash) isn't around to enjoy his election in his first year of eligibility. I thought it might take him a bit of time to get in, and I'm pleased to see Halladay sail into the Hall in his first year. It's sad that he isn't around to enjoy it. :( (By the way, Roy Halladay once wore
one of the best costumes ever; he dressed up as
Jamie Moyer for an 80s-themed party.) Martinez (in his final year of eligibility) and Mussina finally made it this year, though both of them should have been elected years ago. They are clear-cut Hall of Famers. Pitchers like Mussina are held to ridiculous standards because they didn't win 300 games, and that's just not a realistic level at which to gauge which starters are Hall of Famers and which are not. Mussina was a great pitcher.
For the past several years, I have really enjoyed followed the
Hall of Fame tracker as the writers announce their votes.
I'll comment a bit on many (though not all) other players on the 2019 ballot, but to give context, it's worth discussing which new candidates will enter in the
2020 Hall of Fame ballot. The only huge name entering in 2020 is Derek Jeter, who could very well become the second unanimous Hall selection. (Jeter will be close to unanimous, at the very minimum.) There are some other really good players in the 2020 ballot, but I'm not sure if any of them are Hall of Famers. Jason Giambi and the perpetually underrated Bobby Abreu will get some votes, but I don't think that even they will get that many votes. The only newcomer to the ballot with any shot at all — and he is a lock, of course — is Derek Jeter. That gives plenty of scope for remaining candidates to make major increases, which will probably be significantly larger than in a normal year.
The highest voting percentage among those who did not get elected to the Hall is Curt Schilling, who was named on 60.9% of the ballot. With Mussina and Halladay both now in the Hall and no serious candidates among new starting pitchers, I expect Schilling to finally (and belatedly) make it in 2020, as long as he keeps his mouth shut.
Roger Clemens (59.5%) and Barry Bonds (59.1%) kept inching forward, and I'm sure they'll make a bit more progress next year, but they're not still on the ballot because of their performance on the field. I see no reason to think that they'll do anything other than continuing to inch forward.
Larry Walker got 54.6% of the vote in a huge gain, after gaining many votes between 2017 and 2018. Next year is Walker's last one on the ballot, which often results in large gains with one's last chance to think about a player in the regular voting, so I expect that he will follow in Alan Trammell's and Fred McGriff's footsteps and get huge gains again next year. Include the fact that Harold Baines (sigh) is now in the Hall of Fame and that Jeter is the only stellar new candidate in 2020, and I think that Larry Walker will gain hugely in votes again in 2020 and that it will be enough to get elected to the Hall of Fame. Larry Walker was an awesome player and deserves it. Prepare for a lot of discussions about Coors Field in the upcoming year. :)
Omar Vizquel (42.8%) gained a decent number of votes this year, though others were
less optimistic about the signs for Vizquel. Vizquel belongs in the Hall of the Very Good — I give thanks to
Jim Kaat for inventing that term in reference to himself — and also in the
Hall of the Amazing, but he's not a Hall of Famer. Vizquel is destined to become the new
Jack Morris (sigh) when it comes to Hall of Fame debates.
Fred McGriff (39.8%), like Alan Trammell previously, received a major boost in his final year on the writers' Hall of Fame ballot. I expect that he'll be selected relatively soon by the Today's Game Committee, likely when it next meets in 2021.
Manny Ramirez (22.8%) stayed level and Jeff Kent (18.1%) gained a little bit, but not much. Jeff Kent is destined for some veterans' committee's vote some years down the line. Scott Rolen (17.2%) gained a decent amount in his second year of eligibility, and I expect him to gain solidly in 2020 as well, possible even enough to get close to 30% of the vote. Billy Wagner (16.7%), in his fourth year of eligibility, gained a little bit. Wagner deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and I hope the selection of Lee Smith and the lack of realistic new pitcher candidates in 2020 helps him. I suspect that Wagner will become one of the next ones that sabermetricians try to champion, although I think the best move for the next year is concentrating on Larry Walker's candidacy. Todd Helton (16.5%) deserves more votes and may be a Hall of Famer — I think he belongs on the Hall — and I expect him to make major gains next year. Andruw Jones (7.5%) keeps lingering on the ballot — once again finishing slightly above the 5% cutoff to be removed from the ballot — and he deserves much better than this. Jones's career petered out quickly, and people seem to have forgotten just how good a player he was. I don't think he actually belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I'd like to see him get more consideration than this. Among the players who fell off the ballot, Lance Berkman (1.2%) deserved much more consideration for the Hall than he got.
In the 2020 ballot, I predict that Derek Jeter (obviously), Curt Schilling, and Larry Walker make the Hall of Fame. I am least confident about the prediction about Walker, who may end up just falling shy. The fact that there are so few new stellar candidates and that the ballot has cleared up considerably (McGriff is also no longer on the ballot) will help many players make major gains in voting, likely including enough of them for both Curt Schilling and Larry Walker to get elected.
Update (1/26/19) Here are some
lessons learned (according to Jay Jaffe) from the balloting results. One of the things that I noticed in this article, which I hadn't noticed earlier this week (but presumably did at some point in the past), is that the players who are debuting in 2021 are also weak overall. Therefore, there are two years for players who are currently on the ballot to make major gains. Jaffe wrote more details in
this article.
