Hall Predictions

Gwynn and Rip­ken are going to make it. No question.

Gos­sage I think will. I think the Sut­ter inclu­sion will give him enough momentum.

I think Rice will get damn close, par­tially because of how close he was last year, par­tially because his time is run­ning out soon, and par­tially because some vot­ers will feel it as an oblig­a­tion to vote for Rice because he’s not McG­wire, and ends up being more of a “mes­sage” vote. I don’t think he gets in though, because even with those things that I men­tioned, a strong class works against Rice. Bor­der­line can­di­dates get more votes when Hall vot­ers don’t have any­one who stands out and they need some­one to vote for. That’s not the case this year.

Daw­son doesn’t make it, and I really don’t see it hap­pen­ing. His num­bers are going to look weaker and weaker as time goes on.

Blyleven doesn’t make it either. I don’t think he’ll see a sharp drop, but I also don’t see him improv­ing much right now. He had 53% last year — he needs a hell of a lot more votes that he’s not likely to get. Jack Mor­ris will prob­a­bly end up get­ting almost as many votes as Blyleven, which shows you what we’re deal­ing with.

McGwire’s not get­ting in, but this year’s bal­lot­ing is going to mean absolutely noth­ing when try­ing to fig­ure out how many votes he’ll get for next year. I think he’s going to get a hell of a lot more votes than peo­ple think he’s going to get, and it’s going to piss a lot of peo­ple off. I think there’s a lot of vot­ers who are vot­ing for him on prin­ci­ple, and those votes will dis­ap­pear once they see how close McG­wire gets to induc­tion. It’ll greatly out­num­ber the amount of votes that McG­wire would have got­ten from the “I’ll vote for him, but he doesn’t deserve a first-year-on-the-ballot-vote” crowd.

Of the non-McGwire new­com­ers, those with the best chance to stick around to the next bal­lot are Harold Baines (who will, despite being the only new­comer left off the press release), Saber­ha­gen, O’Neill, and maybe Canseco.

Albert Belle stands a good chance of falling off the bal­lot, which is a damn shame. He barely stayed on last year, and with him being in the news in a neg­a­tive light recently, there’s going to be more than a few peo­ple who voted for him in the past that won’t vote for him this year.

If I’m to guess who drops off this years bal­lot for next year, it’ll be Belle, Caminiti, Witt, Joyner, Bro­sius, Fer­nan­dez, Bonilla, Bichette, Buh­ner, Davis, White, Canseco, and O’Neill. Oh, and Steve Gar­vey, who is in his last year of eligibility.

As for the “oth­ers”, the 12 ESPN.com base­ball writ­ers who have real-life HoF votes shooed-in Gwynn and Rip­ken (12 for 12), and mainly agreed on Gos­sage (11 for 12), Daw­son and Rice (10 for 12). Jack Mor­ris actu­ally got more votes (8) than Blyleven (7), with all seven vot­ers for Blyleven also vot­ing for Mor­ris, with Buster Olney¹ being the dif­fer­ence. Four voted for McG­wire (Olney, Jim Caple², Jayson Stark, and Peter Gam­mons), three for Tram­mell (Caple, Phil Rogers, and Tim Kurkjian), and seven oth­ers get­ting one vote each (Baines, Belle, Con­cep­cion, Gar­vey, Mur­phy, Parker, and Lee Smith).

184,000+ ESPN.com vot­ers cast votes, and using the 75% HoF method of inclu­sion, only Rip­ken and Gwynn get in (some­thing that isn’t unthink­able and wouldn’t sur­prise me much.) Only Andre Daw­son got more than half of the votes out­side of those two, although only ten (11 count­ing Gar­vey) fall off the “public“‘s ballot:

83.0% Cal Rip­ken, Jr.
81.6% Tony Gwynn
54.6% Andre Daw­son
45.7% Rich Gos­sage
43.3% Lee Smith
42.4% Jim Rice
39.6% Bert Blyleven
37.1% Don Mat­tingly
31.4% Tommy John
30.2% Mark McG­wire
26.7% Dale Mur­phy
24.9% Jack Mor­ris
23.0% Orel Her­shiser
19.0% Dave Parker
15.6% Steve Gar­vey
14.9% Alan Tram­mell
13.5% Bret Saber­ha­gen
9.7% Harold Baines
9.0% Dave Con­cep­cion
7.8% Paul O’Neill
6.6% Albert Belle
6.1% Jose Canseco
4.5% Ken Caminiti
3.3% Eric Davis
3.2% Jay Buh­ner
3.1% Wally Joyner
2.6% Scott Bro­sius
2.5% Devon White
2.4% Tony Fer­nan­dez
2.3% Bobby Witt
2.2% Bobby Bonilla
2.1% Dante Bichette

Total Votes: 184,042

Of course, web polls are what they are, and allow for those who just want to vote for their favorite to just pick one per­son and leave every­one else off, or allow for the “joke votes” (no offense Bobby Witt). As a gen­tle reminder of the “vot­ing pub­lic” that takes these polls, a seper­ate poll (61,510 votes cast) saw more peo­ple say that they would vote for McG­wire on the first bal­lot than Barry Bonds, if Bonds were eli­gi­ble today (46.3% to 44.9%). That just gives you an idea of how unpop­u­lar Bonds is, who has clearly supe­rior num­bers to McG­wire both cur­rently and in the pre-questionable era.

Man, it’s going to get inter­est­ing in the next cou­ple of years.

¹Buster Olney thinks yes for Mor­ris, no for Blyleven. Buster Olney has also pub­lished arti­cles about how he thinks Tony Gwynn should be in the Hall of Fame and sev­eral arti­cles using vague rumors to break sto­ries that may or moy not hap­pen, such as how Boston may have made a huge bid to secure the ser­vices of Daisuke Mat­suzaka. Buster Olney also throws tri­dents. Buster Olney loves lamp.

²Jim Caple has a Hall of Fame vote? Caple hasn’t writ­ten any­thing in the last sev­eral years that hasn’t been either a sad attempt at humor or part of his “I hate the Yan­keez!” shtick. He comes off like a 50 year old guy try­ing to be hip and “wacky”. Hell, the aver­age Jim Caple Page 2 col­umn? Find a cur­rent trend (usu­ally base­ball related) that has been beaten to death, and Caple exposes fur­ther exam­ples of it to the extreme with “comic” results (the Giants are going to sign Hoyt Wil­helm. And he’s DEAD! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!) Rip the Yan­kees. Send it in, pre­pare Hall of Fame bal­lot. Cripes, Bill Sim­mons at least is some­what enter­tain­ing; give him a bal­lot if you want a Page 2 guy vot­ing. Or bet­ter yet, give that bal­lot to Keith Law.