Whither the Killer B's?
Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez will surely be elected. The only question is how close to unanimous they are. Neither will be unanimous, because of a few writers with tremendous egos who think that no one should be unanimous. But they are two of the best pitchers to ever toe the rubber. They're in.
The PED gang will continue to be kept out. Barry Bond, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa will continue to be in the bottom half of the vote. Sosa, who only got 7 percent last time, may actually drop off the ballot (if he gets less than five percent).
There are a bunch of guys who don't deserve serious consideration, but get to bask in the couple months that they and the "Hall of Fame" are in the same sentence. These include Rich Aurelia, Eddie Guardado, Darin Erstad, Jason Schmidt, Jermaine Dye, Aaron Boone, and Brian Giles. These guys may not get any votes, and won't be around next year.
There is also a category of pretty-good sluggers who may get between 10 and 50 percent, but no higher: Garry Sheffield, Carlos Delgado, and Fred McGriff, who only got 11 percent last year and really deserves higher--I could easily be talked into accepting him as a HOFer. Sheffield suffers from the same problem Jeff Kent does--he was on too many teams and was seen as a clubhouse problem. Players who you can't identify with one or even two teams seem to struggle more than others who do.
But what interests me most about the vote this year is what becomes of three players, two of whom were part of the pennant-winning Houston Astros team that were part of the "Killer B's," Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. The third is Mike Piazza. All three of these guys have the numbers for Hall of Fame induction.
Let's start with the Astros (the other two Killer B's were Lance Berkman and Carlos Beltran, who are not eligible yet). There are no players in the Hall who played the majority of their careers with Houston, and thus there are no Astros caps (or Colt .45s for that matter) on any plaques in the Hall. This should change this year. It is Biggio's third year on the ballot, and he was just a whisker away from election last year, with 74.8. He has over 3,000 hits, and according to Bill James, he's one of the best second-basemen to ever play the game (he was also a good catcher). I think what has held Biggio back has been the bottleneck of good players (writers can only vote for ten) and that he just doesn't seem like a Hall of Famer to some, because he was never considered an all-time great while he played.
As for Bagwell, some of this is true with him as well, but I think he has been tainted by the PED era, even though I don't know of any direct accusations, let alone suspensions. Bagwell is in his fifth year on the ballot, and the numbers don't lie: his average season was 34 homers, 115 RBIs, and a .297 lifetime batting average, which is very high for a power hitter in this day and age. Another thing that may hurt him is that his career ended kind of abruptly, after only 15 years and at age 37. This seems to bother writers, and has hurt other players, like Jim Rice, similarly. Bagwell got 59 percent of the vote two years ago, but sank back down to 54 percent last year. At this rate it doesn't seem like he's going to get in via the writers' avenue.
That brings me to Piazza, and my continuing mystification as to why it's taking him so long to be inducted. By almost any measure, he is the best hitting catcher to ever play the game: he has over 400 home runs and 1335 RBI, and a lifetime batting average of .308! The only thing that can be keeping him out is a whiff of PED use, which is blatantly unfair. He has two go-rounds, and went up to 62 percent last year, so if not this year, maybe next.
The other new face that may stand a chance at induction this year is John Smoltz. Two of the other great Brave pitchers of the '90s, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, were inducted last year. Smoltz certainly has the resume, but is clearly behind Johnson and Martinez, so will voters who are stingy consent to vote for three pitchers this year? Smoltz is 213-155, and as the benchmark of 300 wins seems to be getting more and more unlikely, that's a damn good record, especially when you add in 154 saves.
The bottleneck that I mentioned has brought some criticism from the blogosphere. Because writers have only ten votes, they may not be able to vote for every player they want, and because votes may be scattered (especially those to the PED gang) it's keeping players out. I see the point, but I'm not sure it's a tragedy. It should be very hard to be elected to the Hall of Fame, and if there is an abundance of good players, so be it. The Hall changed a rule that seems to be focused directly on this, as they cut the number of years a player is on the writers' ballot from fifteen to ten. Though they may deny it, this is certainly an attempt to get players like Bonds and Clemens off the ballot quicker, and free up the logjam.
The results will be announced on January 6th. I'm predicting it will be Johnson, Martinez, and Biggio.
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