And None Shall Pass

Shall pass the voting requirement, that is. At 2 PM ET today, Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson announced on MLB Network and MLB.com that no player was selected by the BBWAA to be enshrined. This is the eighth time no former payer was elected and the first since 1996.

Not only did no player receive the required 75%, only two players received more than 60% of the vote: Craig Biggio (68.2%) and Jack Morris (67.7%).

Biggio garnered 388 votes, falling 39 votes shy of the necessary 427. This year, 569 ballots were cast including 5 blank ballots.

For Morris, it was only a 1% increase over his percentage from last year. It meant three more votes for Morris. Next year will be the last time Morris will appear on the writers ballot.

And it won’t be any easier for Morris as Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas and Mike Mussina will make their HOF ballot debuts with the next round of voting. This was likely the last shot Morris had to reach baseball “immortality”.

As you may have read earlier today, Tyler revealed a couple of his votes in Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. He also referenced that as part of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, BRM casts a ballot. Here are the results of the BRM staff vote with 8 ballots being received:

Sep 21, 2012; Houston, TX, USA; Biggio poses for a photo with current Astros second baseman Jose Altuve before a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Minute Maid Park. (Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports)

Craig Biggio – 5
Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza – 4
Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez – 3
Dale Murphy, Alan Trammell, Curt Schilling – 2
Kenny Lofton, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Reggie Sanders (didn’t think I’d reveal this, did you? He knows who he is. Side note: Sanders didn’t receive any votes and will not be on the next ballot.)

If I had used the 75% criteria similar to the BBWAA and BBA, we would have had a blank ballot, which there were actually 5 blank ballots received in the BBWAA voting. I used the majority, more than 50%, as 8 ballots is hardly, in my cloudy mind anyway, enough of a sample to impose such a rule. The BRM ballot submitted to the BBA was cast only for Biggio. The BBA had only one to recommend as well, but it was not Biggio. It was for Jeff Bagwell.

There were a couple of things I took away from just the BRM voting.

One was there was a pretty definite divide between the older and younger staff members. The younger seemingly had no issue in casting any vote for a player “associated” with PED use.

Gaze again at our vote. Notice something? No votes for Jack Morris who received the second highest vote among the writers. This also shows that there could be a bit of a generation gap among the staff. That’s not a bad thing at all.

One ballot had only one player on it while one ballot was stuffed with ten votes, the highest number permitted.

The only other player any BRM staff member selected that will not be on next year’s ballot was Lofton.

I also had a couple of thoughts about the BBWAA vote.

I know you’re wondering how much of the vote Bonds and Clemens received. There was speculation that they could get as high as 50%. Not even close as Clemens would manage only 37.6% (214 votes) and Bonds wasn’t far behind with 36.2% (206 votes). To receive 50%, each would have had a vote total of around 285.

Despite this year being the last that Dale Murphy will be on the ballot (the 15 year maximum “rule”), he saw the greatest increase in support going from 14.5% last year TO 18.6 this year. That translates into 23 more votes.

Who lost the most? That would be Don Mattingly. He “lost” a total of 33 votes compared to last year and dropped from 17.8% of the vote to 13.2%. He has two year left on the ballot provided he receives the necessary 5% next year. That might be a tough ask with the “newcomers” I previously mentioned.

Jun 23, 2012; Cincinnati, OH, USA; Cincinnati Reds hall of fame inductees Sean Casey (left) and Dan Driesson (right) joke around during a press conference prior to the game against the Minnesota Twins at Great American Ball Park. (Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports)

Next year, three players with ties to the Reds should make their HOF ballot debut. I’m sure you’ve heard of one guy. His name is Sean Casey. You also may have heard of Dmitri Young. What about Shawn Estes? He should be on the ballot as well.

“The Mayor” played with the Reds for 1,075 of his 1,405 career games. He was elected to the Reds Hall of Fame last year. He posted a triple slash of .305/.371/.463 while donning a Reds uniform.

Of the four teams of which Young was a member, he played more games as a Red (565) than any other for which he played. As a member of the Reds from 1998-2001, Young posted an equally impressive triple slash of .304/.353/.488.

Estes played for seven different teams, but only played in Cincinnati for one season (2002).