Welcome to 2022 and the seventh year of 210Sports, and in what has become a New Year’s tradition here on the blog I’ll begin the year off by casting my completely unofficial Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.
To be eligible to cast a real ballot a person must be a Baseball Writers’ Association of America member for at least 10 years and cover baseball for 10 consecutive years for an accredited outlet. I, obviously, have neither qualification and will never get to cast an official ballot. But I do watch a lot of baseball and have a blog I can write about sports on, so that must count for something.
Within the rules determined by the Baseball Hall of Fame, BWAA writers can vote for up to 10 players on the ballot and may use any criteria they see fit in selecting which players from the ballot to vote for. I am a huge fan of the way Bill Ballou of the Worcester Telegram, my local newspaper, decides who to vote for: “you would buy a ticket just so you could tell your grandchildren you saw him perform”. That is as great a reason to vote for anyone as I have ever heard.
As it does every year, the subject of performance-enhancing drugs will come up. To be honest, how I deal with that is very easy: if a player is eligible, I’ll vote for him if I think he’s worthy of the Hall of Fame. I understand that some people think they shouldn’t be enshrined. My issue is how do I determine who did them and who didn’t? Now some of the later candidates will have failed tests, and then including them could be an issue for voters. But not for me, because if they’re eligible, I’ll consider them.
The first part of my ballot is easy, it’s the players I voted for last year that are still on the ballot this year. Those players are:
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Manny Ramirez
Curt Schilling
Billy Wagner
None of those guys got any better or worse on the field, so I’m not sure why a voter wouldn’t just copy over the ballot they had the previous year. I guess you could see voters dropping some players because those players turned out to be really sketchy people since their inclusion on the ballot–yes Curt Shilling, I’m talking about you–but short of being a physical menace to society, I try to let their on-field careers decide if they’re worthy.
For the same reason, I also won’t make any additions to any players I left off before. In order for me to add a player I omitted before someone would have to convince me I got it wrong leaving him off the first year he was eligible. That’s happened once before when I added Edgar Martinez in 2019. Looking at who is on this year’s official ballot again from previous seasons there’s no chance of it happening for any of these players.
Of the first-time candidates on the 2022 ballot, there are two I would cast a ballot for.
The first is Alex Rodriguez. I think Arod is a total buffoon and would like it if he wasn’t on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, but how anyone could make a legitimate argument that Rodriguez isn’t a Hall of Famer is beyond me. He’s a three-time MVP, 14-time All-Star, and ten-time Silver Slugger winner. He won two Gold Gloves, and probably would have won more had he gotten to play shortstop with the Yankees as opposed to the inferior fielding Derek Jeter keeping that spot. Yes, I get the PED argument. But he’s on the ballot and eligible, and his stats say he’s easily a Hall of Famer, so he gets my vote.
Second on the list is David Ortiz. If you think he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame just because he was primarily a designated hitter my one question to you is when was it decided DH’s aren’t eligible for the Hall of Fame. He’s on the ballot, he’s eligible, so he should be voted in. Ten-time All-Star, seven-time Silver Slugger winner, a World Series MVP, and finished in the top-5 in the MVP balloting five times.
All the other new candidates might struggle to get the 5% of the votes they need to stay on the ballot for 2023. It doesn’t matter that much to me, I can’t see any reason most of those guys were on the ballot to begin with other than they met the absolute minimum requirements. The only way any of those guys belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame is if they buy a ticket to visit.
On January 25 the BBWAA will announce the results of its 2022 Hall of Fame balloting, and those that get the required 75% for enshrinement will join Buck O’Neil, Bud Fowler, Minnie Minoso, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, and Tony Oliva at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on July 24, 2022, in Cooperstown, New York.
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