My 2024 MLB Hall of Fame Ballot

 OK, I feel like I should start this post off with a disclaimer: I don't actually have an actual vote for the MLB Hall of Fame. But a large part of the discussion that baseball fans have, especially during the offseason, is about who they would vote for if they did. And over the seasons of HBD, I have developed a pretty standard method of figuring out which fictional baseball players to vote for in the HOF. 

That method, as you all know, is fairly involved and time consuming so I like to give myself a bit of a reality check each February to make sure all that effort is worth it. The way that I do that is to apply my voting criteria to the MLB Hall of Fame ballot and see who I would vote for in real life if I could. 

In HBD, I look at the five guys who get the most votes and fall short of election to see if my support can push them over the edge...so if I had an MLB vote, I'd do the same thing but look at the top ten since MLB voters have up to 10 votes to use. In case you haven't seen them yet, the results of this year's MLB Hall of Fame voting are below: 

With Rolen getting in, the top 10 who fell short would be: 1) Helton 2) Wagner 3) Andruw Jones 4) Sheffield 5) Beltran 6) Kent 7) A-Rod 8) Manny 9) Vizquel and 10) Pettitte. My preferred metric for HBD is one that I borrowed from MLB.com and is a combination of WAR/year and bonus points based on personal accolades. If I had an MLB vote, I'd probably take the time to run the numbers on the guys I just mentioned but since I don't actually have the vote I'm not going to do that for this post because the HOF Monitor Score (a Bill James creation) will probably give very similar results in terms of HOF worthiness. This is what that metric says about each of the ten guys I listed above:

• Todd Helton: 175 HOFM Score = Slam Dunk HOF'er & Vote #1 from me
•  Billy Wagner: 107 HOFM Score = Strong HOF Case & Vote #2 from me 
• Andruw Jones: 109 HOFM Score = Strong HOF Case & Vote #3 from me 
• Gary Sheffield: 158 HOFM Score = Slam Dunk HOF'er...the numbers say there's no question but I can't remember if he was convicted of using steroids or not. If the answer is yes, I'm passing. If the answer is no, he'll get my next vote. 
• Carlos Beltran: 126 HOFM Score = Strong HOF Case & Vote #4 from me...I read a bunch of stuff this year from people saying they weren't going to vote for him because of his role in the trash can saga. I'm not saying we should forget and/or overlook that, but I am saying that he wasn't banging on trash cans for most of the time he was putting up crazy numbers. 
• Jeff Kent: 123 HOFM Score = Strong HOF Case & Vote #5 from me. 
• A-Rod: 390 HOFM Score = Slam Dunk HOF'er. This is the highest score I've ever seen from an MLB player. By miles. But he's also been proven to have used steroids pretty frequently so I'm going to pass. And the petty Red Sox fan in me can't help but smirk and think of the picture of him kissing his own reflection as I actively pass on him. 
• Manny Ramirez: 226 HOFM Score = Slam Dunk HOF'er. OK, this is the second highest score I can remember seeing from an MLB player (which shows you how ridiculously good A-Rod was...) but I am going to hold the line and pass on Manny as well even though the petty Red Sox fan part of my brain wants to give him a sympathy vote despite the multiple PED suspensions.  
• Omar Vizquel: 120 HOFM Score = Strong HOF Case & Vote #6 from me. This one seems to be quite controversial in real life, but I have zero problems giving a guy like Vizquel some love. He might not have produced a ton of value with his bat, but the numbers say that he was overall a valuable player, and quite a valuable one at that. Value is value in my book, no matter where it comes from. 
• Andy Pettite: 128 HOFM Score = Strong HOF Case & Vote #7 from me. 

            Another Saturday night drinking with the scouts at the Barleymoe

Tonight Elijah Craig is joined by Jose Cuervo, Henry McKenna and Evan Williams

Elijah: Fellas, tonight we are going to talk about the lost position of shortstop in our league.

Jose: Why do you say it's a lost position ?

Elijah: Only one guy in our Hall of Fame is listed as a shortstop.

Henry: You really can't claim Jeimer Ortega as a shortstop. He was mostly a left fielder. He never played shortstop in the majors. Shamrocks signed him as a free agent and played him 5 games at shortstop in low-A before he retired. So our Hall of Fame really has no shortstops. We have some guys who played a season or two at short.

Jose: If I remember correctly Scot Sexton started at short before moving to third base where he put up most of his numbers.

Henry: Another guy in the Hall, Alfredo Diaz , played 472 games at short before moving off the position. He played over 500 games in center but was mainly a second baseman.

Elijah: I brought this up because the last two seasons a shortstop has been drafted with the first and fourth picks.

Evan: Elijah you can expand that to season 57 and you have 6 high picks being shortstops. The 57 draft took shortstops 1st and 5th. And 4 of those guys are still playing short.

Jose: That doesn't compare to the international class of season 52, when the four highest bonuses were given to shortstops. 77.1 million paid out to the 4 guys. Down in the islands they call them "Gloves of Gold" for all the money they got.

Henry: If I remember correctly the 51 season had a high bonused shortstop and 53 had two.

Elijah: Only Stolmy De Paula is still a shortstop.

Jose: You're looking at this all wrong Elijah. These guys are moved off shortstop for defensive specialist. Their bats are still in the lineup and the defense is not only improved buy the specialist at short, but when you move them you improve the defense at whatever position you put them.

Elijah: Well I think some team should keep a big bat at shortstop. The competitive advantage of a guy hitting .275 over guy who hits .225 seems important to me.

Henry: Elijah, who taught you baseball Abner Doubleday? Your big bat can play anything except pitcher and catcher. The bat is still in the lineup.

Elijah: You're missing the point about competitive advantage. This is the one position where you can be much better than the other team. If an average player gets 500 at bats it's a difference of 25 hits for the season. How many of these defensive specialist are a positive 25 on plus or minus defensive plays. We play this game way to defensively.

Evan: I understand your point Elijah and I'm happy you're a drinking scout and not a manager.