Who would Pinstripe Alley elect to the Baseball Hall of Fame from the 2016 ballot?

Every year, the Baseball Writers Association of America releases its ballot of potential inductees to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The members vote on the Hall's newest members, fanbases simultaneously rejoice and grumble, and the cycle repeats. Similarly, the Pinstripe Alley staff has cast its own ballots over the past few years, encouraging larger induction classes than even the BBWAA's near-record of four last year. Perhaps the recent updates to the voting pool will help the writers honor more players, who are just as deserving as the bizarrely high number of 19th century players who did not face nearly the same challenges.

Regardless, Pinstripe Alley chose eight new members for the Hall of Fame from the 2016 ballot. Fifteen of our writers cast votes, meaning that players needed at least 12 votes to meet the minimum 75% necessary for induction. Below are the results and the breakdown of each ballot:

One thing is for certain regarding the upcoming elections--Ken Griffey, Jr. is going to be enshrined next summer. No one's debating that, and even though he should be unanimously inducted, some dingleberry will leave him off. (Even if it's for strategic purposes, that feels gross.) Fortunately, that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and both the BBWAA and PSA agree that "The Kid" is a lock.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, and Edgar Martinez all face huge hurdles to induction, be they PED clouds, severe underappreciation (Mussina), or position bias (Edgar, who is a better DH than David Ortiz but has never received the support that Ortiz almost certainly will get in 2022). Nonetheless, all five are worthy inductees, and PSA ushered them into Cooperstown. A Hall of Fame that barely makes mention of Bonds or Clemens just feels wrong, and Yankees fans know just how amazing Mussina was, despite little attention.

Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, and Tim Raines round out the eight-man PSA 2016 Hall of Fame class. Piazza has the best chance of any rollover candidate to make the BBWAA's cut, having received a nice 69.9% of the vote in 2015. That's only 28 ballots shy of induction, so hopefully he will be joining Griffey in July. Bagwell and Raines should be with them, too, but both finished with roughly 55% showings in 2015. Ideally, these two deserving candidates will take big steps forward on 2016. The clock is ticking on "Rock," too, as this will be his second-to-last ballot before falling to the notoriously shaky whims of the Veterans Committee. The man stole 808 bases and reached base over 3,900 times at bat. He absolutely deserves it, and he should have been inducted about a decade ago.

Longtime Padres closer Trevor Hoffman just missed the PSA cut in his first time on the ballot, but I doubt he'll miss the BBWAA's cut. Although I didn't vote for Hoffman because I thought the 10 candidates I chose were more deserving, I would have included him if there was no limit. (Likewise, I also would have given nods to some other candidates who deserve more consideration, like Jim Edmonds and Gary Sheffield, who were both shut out.) Hoffman was a stellar reliever with a changeup that was nearly impossible to hit. Expect him alongside Griffey and Piazza in the BBWAA's 2016 class.

Everyone else appeared on under half of the PSA writers' ballots. The only one to come close to half was the Tigers' All-Star shortstop Alan Trammell, who is in his last year of eligibility. He is not going to make it to Cooperstown, but damn it, he should some day. Trammell compares far more favorably to Derek Jeter than the average fan might think, and Jeter is obviously a slam dunk for 2020 induction.

So how did we do? Who would be on your Hall of Fame ballot? Let us know in the comments.