The FAN 2018 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot RESULTS ARE IN!!!

[RI Richmark]

Well the Baseball Hall of Fame has just announced it's ballot for this year. For the last few years we held our own ballot and once again it's time to have our say.

Like before the rules are the same as the rules for the BBWAA. You can vote for up to 10 of the players listed here. Any player who gets 75% of the vote gets in. If for some reason you don't think any of the players are worthy then there is a blank ballot option but if you click it you can't vote for anybody else.

Voting will close and the winners will be announced on Jan 1, 2018 a couple of weeks before the Hall of Fame announces it's results.

In previous years we've actually been a lot tougher than the BBWAA but last year we topped ourselves as NOBODY got the necessary 75% for induction. I can't wait to see what the results will be this time.

[Duke Cameron]

Barry Bonds
Chipper Jones
Roger Clemens
Trevor Hoffman

[Some Guy]

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Chipper Jones
Edgar Martinez
Mike Mussina
Manny Ramirez
Scott Rolen
Curt Schilling
Jim Thome
Larry Walker

Would also vote for Vlad Guerrero and Andruw Jones with two more spots. Would consider Jeff Kent in some circles. Trevor Hoffman doesn't belong there at all.

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

Bonds
Clemens
Vlady
Andruw Jones
Chipper
Edgar
Moose
Manny
Sosa
Thome

[jacobsinc224]

Barry Bonds
Chipper Jones
Roger Clemens
Trevor Hoffman
Vladimir Guerrero

[RadcapRadsley]

Bonds
Clemens
Guerrero
Edgar Ramirez
Manny Ramirez
Martinez
Schilling
Visquel
Walker

[Ben Wyatt]

The HOF is a joke without Bonds and Clemens.

And as much as he's a total dink, Schilling belongs in there

[Cyno]

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Vladimir Guerrero
Mike Mussina
Chipper Jones
Edgar Martinez
Manny Ramirez
Larry Walker
Jim Thome
Gary Sheffield

[Deleted]

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Vladimir Guerrero
Andruw Jones
Chipper Jones
Mike Mussina
Jim Thome
Edgar Martinez
Omar Vizquel
Larry Walker

[fw91]

Guerrero
Hoffman
Jones
Kent
Mussina
Schilling
Thome

[thegatewaydrug]

Chipper
Vlad
Thome
McGriff
Vizquel
Edgar
Hoffman
Wagner

[Fundertaker]

Edgar
+ a few more names

[Kevin Dunn]

Nov 21, 2017 7:07:58 GMT -5 Ben Wyatt said:

The HOF is a joke without Bonds and Clemens.

And as much as he's a total dink, Schilling belongs in there

I can’t see shilling getting in with only 200 win’s.

[BRV]

Here are my eight inductees and the reasoning behind each selection.

- Barry Bonds: You want to put it on his plaque that he was a PED guy? Be my guest. Babe Ruth didn't have to play against players of color. Hank Aaron hit his 755 home runs in an era when amphetamines were passed around like chewable vitamins. If you look hard enough, I'm sure you could find something to accuse every baseball player ever. But don't ignore the 494 home runs, 471 stolen bases, three MVP awards and nine All-Star appearances that he achieved before his alleged steroid use began. Also, he's baseball's all-time home run king. In an era when almost everybody was cheating, he was still the most feared hitter in the game.

- Roger Clemens: Like Bonds, he was a Hall of Famer before the alleged PED use, and like Bonds he deserves enshrinement. One of the most dominant power pitchers ever, plain and simple. And like Bonds, if you want to slap an asterisk on his plaque, feel free.

- Vladimir Guerrero: He was really a comet of a player, streaking across the skies and flashing before our eyes for a decade, but his stretch from 1999 to 2007 is impossibly good. During that nine-year run, he averaged .327, hitting .320 or better six of the nine seasons and never below .300. He was a true five-tool player with power to all fields, the ability to hit the ball anywhere inside - or outside - of the strike zone, speed when he needed it, tremendous defense, and the best outfield arm since Roberto Clemente. I doubt he'll be inducted on the first ballot because he doesn't have that one eye-popping career statistic and because he spent most of his career in the anonymity of Montreal, but he was phenomenal at everything on a diamond and there was no single hitter I feared more as a Red Sox fan than Guerrero in the 2004 Divisional Series.

- Andruw Jones: He probably won’t ever get into Cooperstown, but man does he deserve it. Probably the best defensive centerfielder of his era right alongside Jim Edmonds, Jones won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves patrolling center for the Braves. Jones, like Omar Vizquel, deserves recognition for his defensive acumen alone, but it’s his bat that puts him over the top as a first-ballot inductee for me. His 434 home runs are eye-popping numbers for a guy best regarded for his defense.

- Chipper Jones: When I was poring over the 2018 ballot, I initially saw Jones’ name and just glanced right past it, and in a way that summarizes his career. He was always a tremendous player, but unless you were a true Braves fan, he was one of those guys whose success you just sort of looked at, was impressed by, and then moved on. Even on the Braves teams of the 1990s, he was always overshadowed by their ace pitching staff. But looking at his career figures, he’s a no-doubt Hall of Famer. He’s a career .301/.401/.529/.930 hitter, peaking with a .364 average in 2008 at age 36. His success wasn’t attributable to the Steroid Era, either, as he maintained his ability to hit the ball for power and average over the duration of his prime, with his later years still producing All-Star caliber seasons.

- Manny Ramirez: An admittedly biased pick given my allegiances, but Manny Ramirez's credentials are impossibly to deny. He was a weapon in the batter's box, making hitting look effortless. A career .312 hitter with 555 home runs, he will face the wrath of voters because of his links to performance-enhancers but you could tell with his beautiful, natural swing that he was just made for baseball. He would have been a .300 hitter even if he didn't juice, as he and Albert Pujols were nos. 1 and 1a as the best right-handed hitters of their era.

- Curt Schilling: My 2014 and 2015 ballots did not include Schilling, but I've warmed to his candidacy over the past few years. He doesn't have longevity on his side, having been an ace pitcher for about a decade and he never won a Cy Young Award, but he was a bulldog on the mound and was the kind of guy you could hand the ball to in October and know he'd get the job done. 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 19 postseason starts, Schilling was a driving force on three World Series champions and four World Series finalists spread over 14 years. While his starts in the 2004 postseason were memorable for how he gutted out an ankle injury, his performance in the 2001 World Series is one of the single most dominant playoff pitching performances ever.

- Jim Thome: I’ve never had Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa on my ballots, because I have a bias against players I perceive to be “softball sluggers,” those one-dimensional hulking hitters who stroll to the plate and just swing for the fences. So it’s a bit hypocritical to leave McGwire and Sosa off but include Thome, but his herculean swings felt more like Frank Thomas than either of the previous two. In his prime, he was one of the most feared hitters in the American League, clubbing 35 or more home runs nine times, and he recorded 612 home runs over the course of his 22-year career without a whiff of performance-enhancing drug allegations or innuendo. That said, if I’m ranking my Hall of Famers based on worthiness of induction to Cooperstown, Thome is eighth out of eight, considering all he did was mash.

[Ishmeal Loves Kaseyhausen]

Bonds
Clemens
Vlad
Hoffman
Chipper
Kent
Edgar
Schilling
Sheffield
JI
Jim Thome

[cabbageboy]

I didn't put everyone here but here goes:

Barry Bonds. Look, the guy is a Hall of Famer. It's a joke he isn't in since he's eligible to be in.
Roger Clemens. Same deal as Bonds. He has to be in if he's eligible.
Chipper Jones. A part of me thinks he is Hall of Very Good but he certainly had longevity and an 85 career WAR is nothing to sneeze at. So to me he will get in.
Mike Mussina. Not a great career ERA but he played in the heart of the steroid era so I'll give him some leeway on that. 270 wins in this day and age is pretty great.
Jim Thome. Another guy I'm not wild about but hey 612 career HRs without any PED rumors is automatic.

Some guys like Manny Ramirez and Sammy Sosa just aren't getting a ballot from me right now. Sosa was mainly a product of the steroid era, while Manny actually got caught twice. I toyed with McGriff but his 52.4 career WAR isn't all that great. Sheffield is a Hall of Very Good player as well. I might be persuaded to put Schilling in, but a lot later a la Jack Morris.

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

Dec 27, 2017 14:38:15 GMT -5 BRV said:

- Andruw Jones: He probably won’t ever get into Cooperstown, but man does he deserve it. Probably the best defensive centerfielder of his era right alongside Jim Edmonds, Jones won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves patrolling center for the Braves.

I'd say Jones is far better than Edmonds. Edmonds was great, but Jones had such a great jump on the ball, that catches that Edmonds would have to dive for, Jones would make them look like routine catches.

[RI Richmark]

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

We are now 12 hours away from finding out who we, the FANs, have voted in the Baseball Hall of Fame (and who we did not vote in).

As of this post there are 314 votes from 42 voters. That means there was an average of 7 players per voter. But we had similar numbers last year and still nobody got enough votes needed to get in so take that for what it's worth. Right now a player would need 32 votes to get the 75% needed to get enshrined.

As for my votes:
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Vladimir Guerrero
Chipper Jones
Edgar Martinez
Manny Ramirez
Curt Schilling

Still time for those last minute votes. Thank you for participating.

[RI Richmark]

Well the votes are in and for the the second year in a row we failed to elect anybody!

With 43 voters a player needed to get 75% (32.25 or 33 votes) of the votes to get elected. Chipper Jones came oh so close, falling just one vote short. The two most controversial players on this ballot, Barry Bonds & Roger Clemens, finished second and third respectively with 30 and 28 votes.

Just like last year there were no blank ballots cast. The 43 voters cast 324 votes between them. That's an average of 7.5 players per ballot. But just like last year the votes were so spread out that no one got enough to qualify. In fact among the 33 players on the ballot all but 3 (Orlando Hudson, Jason Isringhausen & Kevin Millwood) got at least one vote.

I wish the nominees better luck with the actual Hall of Fame vote in a few weeks than they have had here.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}Seriously, who's the guy who didn't vote for Chipper?

Thanks again to all those who participated. I hope we have better luck next year.

[Duke Cameron]

Wow. People here are more picky then the actual Hall of Fame.