1. Craig Biggio (68.2%, 1st year): Failing to elect Biggio is so silly. The Hall of Fame voters decided not to support the steroid users because they cheated, and then many didn't support Biggio either ... because he wasn't as dominant as the steroid users. That makes absolutely no sense. Biggio is a Hall of Fame player, and he's going to get in, probably as soon as 2014. Denying him this year was utterly pointless.
2. Jack Morris (67.7%, 14th year): Morris only went up one percentage point from last year's total. 2014 will be his final go-around on the ballot, and he'll be hard-pressed to earn enshrinement with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Mike Mussina gaining eligibility.
3. Jeff Bagwell (59.6%, 3rd year): He moved up from 56% last year. This guy had a better career OPS than Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. 40% of tenured baseball writers whose job it is to cover the sport don't think he's a Hall of Famer. Maybe they just hate the Astros. This might make more sense.
4. Mike Piazza (57.8%, 1st year): There is no evidence, anywhere, that Mike Piazza used steroids or any variety of performance-enhancing drugs. He is the best offensive catcher in baseball history. He should have earned 90% of the vote.
5. Tim Raines (52.2%, 6th year): Easily the most encouraging trend on this year's ballot. Raines moved over 50% for the first time, and will probably get in after a few more years go by.
6. Lee Smith (47.8%, 11th year): A bad year for Smith, whose vote total actually decreased a few percentage points. This isn't a bad thing for the Hall, though -- the standard for relief pitchers should be very high.
7. Curt Schilling (38.8%, 1st year): Schilling getting so much less support than Jack Morris is a joke. Morris pitched 563 more career innings than Schilling -- but allowed a whopping 569 more runs. Schilling had at least six seasons that were each better than Morris's best season.
8. Roger Clemens (37.6%, 1st year): Hey, while we're at it, Roger Clemens's tenth-best season was better than Morris's best season.
9. Barry Bonds (36.2%, 1st year): He had more walks than Jim Rice had hits. I don't care what substances he took or what laws he broke or who he pissed off -- Barry Bonds is hands-down the best baseball player since Willie Mays. He should reach 75% someday. It's also bizarre that Bonds and Clemens didn't finish with the exact same vote total. Who the heck looked at these two and said, "Clemens for sure, but that Bonds cat? No way no how."
10. Edgar Martinez (35.9%, 4th year): Edgar's vote total has stagnated; things aren't looking good for him unless Frank Thomas's upcoming election changes the perspective on designated hitters for a large percentage of writers.
11. Alan Trammell (33.6%, 12th year): The rules prevent the writers from voting for more than 10 players in any one year; otherwise, I would have included Trammell as the 11th name on my hypothetical ballot.
12. Larry Walker (21.6%, 3rd year): Ironically, Walker might have a better shot at Cooperstown if he had never played a game in Coors Field. That Rockies uniform is like the baseball equivalent of the scarlet letter.
13. Fred McGriff (20.7%, 4th year): McGriff is often held up as the best example of a "clean" player who was hurt by the steroid-users because his numbers were marginalized. Well, two things happened to a 35-year-old McGriff in 1999: his OPS went up 142 points from the previous year, and infamous drug-user Jose Canseco became his teammate. This is not to insinuate that McGriff used steroids -- rather, it's to point out the inherent idiocy and hypocrisy in trying to guess from afar which players were clean (Biggio! McGriff!) and which players weren't (Bagwell! Piazza!).
14. Dale Murphy (18.6%, 15th year): Murphy has now exhausted his 15 years of eligibility, dropping off the ballot. Outside of his six or seven great seasons, he was an average player.
15. Mark McGwire (16.9%, 7th year): His vote total is steadily declining now. The most prolific home run hitter in history -- his 10.61 at-bat per homer ratio is best all-time -- is never getting into the Hall of Fame.
16. Don Mattingly (13.2%, 13th year): Suffers from Dale Murphy Syndrome.
17. Sammy Sosa (12.5%, 1st year): A shockingly weak showing. And just like that, we know his fate: Sosa will never be in the Hall of Fame.
18. Rafael Palmeiro (8.8%, 3rd year): Not only will he join Sosa and McGwire in the "Rejected" pile -- he's in real danger of falling off the ballot entirely next year. I have no problem with this. The man was caught red-handed using steroids when testing was actually in place, and his statistical case has holes anyway.
Those were the 18 candidates who earned the required 5% to return to the ballot in 2014 (except for Murphy, who ran out of time). There, is however, one notable name who didn't reach the minimum threshold:
19. Kenny Lofton (3.2%, 1st year): This, I think, is the biggest travesty of all. Worse than no one getting elected, worse than Piazza getting victimized by mere suspicion, worse than all-time greats getting laughably low vote totals due to steroids. Because Kenny Lofton might be a Hall of Famer.
He's right on the edge, a classic borderline candidate. His fate essentially rests on how valuable one thinks his defense in center field was, and current methods of evaluating that skill aren't adequate. Five or ten years from now, those methods will have certainly improved. We'll have a better grasp of where Lofton stands relative to other Hall of Fame center fielders. Ideally, he could have lingered on the ballot until then, provoking discussion and analysis of his excellent career. That's the reason why the 15-year rule exists, so the non-obvious cases can be fleshed out fully. Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, and Andre Dawson benefited from that process. Jack Morris and Dale Murphy received the same treatment. Lofton, though? He'll never get that. He's gone, abruptly, never to return.
Lofton's one shot at baseball immortality -- even a fair shot at baseball immortality -- was wasted because the writers dawdled. They've refused to elect obvious candidates in a timely fashion, instead choosing to kick the can down the road and letting the ballot swell in size. Bagwell and Raines? Maybe in a few years. Biggio and Piazza? Not right now. Bonds and Clemens? Make them suffer.
Now there's significant backlog. There were at least 15 players with a legitimate case for Cooperstown on the ballot this year. In 2014, they will be joined by Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina, and Jeff Kent. In 2015, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Gary Sheffield, and Nomar Garciaparra all become eligible. In 2016: Ken Griffey Jr., Trevor Hoffman, and Jim Edmonds. In 2017: Pudge Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Jorge Posada. Hall of Famers are jumping onto the ballot faster than they can be elected. But the writers traditionally induct only one or two candidates per year, which isn't enough to keep pace. And this year's goose egg won't exactly help. Without changes, there will be victims lost in the morass of names. This time, it was Lofton. Next time, it could be someone more prolific.
Short of smacking some voters upside the head, there's an easy fix available: changing the 10-man ballot limit. The archaic rule preventing voters from checking more than 10 names on their ballots dates back to the 1930s, when there were half as many teams as there are today and Jackie Robinson hadn't yet broken the color barrier. Obviously, there are more great players in today's era. The Hall of Fame should let writers vote for 12 or 15 or 20 candidates instead of just 10, or else there just isn't going to be enough room for everybody in the coming years.
With any luck, 2014 will be a banner year for the Hall. The inductees could potentially include Greg Maddux, Craig Biggio, Tom Glavine, Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas, and Mike Piazza. Maybe 2014 will be less embarrassing. Or maybe it will be just as bad as 2013, the year an unknown writer used an open spot on his ballot to cast a lone vote for Aaron Sele, but Kenny Lofton couldn't even get a callback.
We may never know who voted for Aaron Sele, so we will have to cast suspicion on all baseball writers during that era
— Matt Sussman (@suss2hyphens) January 9, 2013
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