12/21/24
July 26, 2014
Baseball Hall of Fame Announces Changes to Voting Process for Recently Retired Players:
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Board of Directors today announced changes to the rules for election for recently retired players, reducing the length of stay on the ballot for players from a maximum of 15 to 10 years...
Conspiracy Theory Hat on: this is being done deliberately to keep McGwire (among others) off and minimize the presence of the Steroid Era.
posted by Bonkers at 02:49 PM on July 26, 2014
It's probably their (incorrect) method of stopping future log jams. What they should do is allow for an unlimited ballot size, and to not count blank ballots as "votes" (for computing voting percentages).
All this is going to do is punt the ball further down the street until the VC has to handle it.
posted by grum@work at 03:33 PM on July 26, 2014
Unlimited ballots won't help that much; in 2013 only 6.6 names were listed on the average ballot, they aren't using the space they have now.
Until some of the voters pull their heads out of their asses this isn't going to change.
posted by deflated at 08:27 PM on July 26, 2014
Three candidates presently on the BBWAA ballot in years 10-15 will be grandfathered into this system and remain under consideration by the BBWAA for up to the full 15 years. Don Mattingly (15th year in 2015), Alan Trammell (14th year in 2015) and Lee Smith (13th year in 2015) will be eligible to remain on the BBWAA ballot for a maximum of 15 years of consideration.
Here are players most likely to be affected by this ruling:
Years on ballot next time around
McGwire - 9
Raines - 8
E. Martinez - 6
McGriff - 6
Bagwell - 5
Walker - 5
This is going to clear up some of the log jam, but at the same time it's going to pretty much finish off any hope that those players (except maybe Bagwell) will have of getting elected (outside of the Veterans Committee).
Piazza and Biggio should have more than enough time to get in (even with new guys getting added to the ballot), but I think Raines is going to fall short. I also think this reduces the chances for Clemens/Bonds/Sosa as they were going to need time for some log jams to clear out (and minds to change), and that might happen too late (especially with guys like Martinez, Johnson, Moyer, Smoltz, Edmonds, Jeter, Ichiro, Hoffman, Rivera, Griffey, Ramirez, I.Rodriguez, Guerrero still coming down the pipe).