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Three days ago, I put out a request to the Pinstripe Alley community to assemble their collective Hall of Fame ballot. The staff did our own mock election about a month ago, but I was curious to see what the larger group of PSA readers would say.
The poll is over, so here are the somewhat-fascinating results:
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Mike Mussina and Ivan Rodriguez made the cut as members of the 2017 Hall of Fame class. As I mentioned in the previously linked staff column, both Mussina and Rodriguez are very deserving candidates, so their election makes plenty of sense.
Obviously since this is a Yankees-focused site, the ballots were extremely Yankees-centric, thus leading to the exceptionally high vote totals for fan favorites Mussina and Jorge Posada. The long-time catcher’s Hall of Fame case isn’t the clearest, as indicated by Ryan Thibodaux’s superb BBWAA vote tracker, which only has him on 4.6% of the 188 revealed ballots thus far. Like Bernie Williams, Posada is going to struggle to meet even the minimum five percent of votes necessary to remain on the ballot, but he fared pretty well here.
The Yankees favoritism was also present in the eight percent difference between Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, who are essentially identical candidates. Both are obvious slam dunk inner-circle Hall of Famers and in the conversation for best pitcher and hitter all-time, respectively. The only thing standing in the way is their connection to PEDs. So it’s rare to find the Hall of Fame ballot that includes one but not the other. So the fact that Clemens was a Yankee is probably the lone difference-maker here unless there was a race element.
Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines are the leading candidates for induction this year at over 90% each on Thibodaux’s tracker, but unfortunately, neither could crack the necessary 75% needed from the PSA community. Vladimir Guerrero’s 54% total was surprisingly low since he is very much in the mix for induction (74.4% as of post time). The same goes for Trevor Hoffman, whose 49% mark here pales in comparison to his current 72.8% mark, though as Jay Jaffe has noted, his case is a little more debatable.
Every other candidate generally fell in the same vicinity as Thibodaux’s latest BBWAA results. The only exceptions were Curt Schilling (understandably disliked by both Yankees fans and those aggravated by his journalist-threatening tweets), Lee Smith (whose case of “saves and saves alone” isn’t that inspiring), and Gary Sheffield. The latter saw about a 10% jump from the crowd that likely has fond memories of Sheff’s powerful swing from his brief Yankees tenure. As an aside, I really like that Edgar Martinez fared well here, too. That dude could absolutely rake, and DH is a real position.
What do you think of PSA’s results?