The Hardball Times Predicts Four for Baseball Hall of Fame

With a loaded ballot, HBT’s Chris Jaffe has four players heading to Cooperstown.

Safe assumption that Greg Maddux will be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. (Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports)

This Wednesday at 2 PM ET, the Baseball Hall of Fame will announce the class of 2014. If you want to get in on the talk earlier that day, MLB Network will start their coverage at noon ET. They will have interviews with those inducted (yes, I’m sure at least one will get in) and a discussion with cavalcade of folks including Peter Gammons, Ken Rosenthal, Joel Sherman, Tom Verducci, John Smoltz, Harold Reynolds (which might prove to be interesting) and many others.

Including his post from today, Chris Jaffe at The Hardball Times has been predicting how the BBWAA will vote in each of the past seven years. He’s been pretty darn good, too.

"I’ve had some success over the years. In the last six columns, I made 96 predictions on what level of support a candidate will receive. I’m proud to say that in 32 cases—exactly one-third of them—I was within one percent of a players actual support. And 79 times I’ve come without five percent of the real total. My average margin of error has been 3.5 percent."

I think I would brag about that as well.

[RELATED: CTTP’s Baseball Hall of Fame Voting Results]

What makes Jaffe’s article compelling – well, to me – is that he predicts four will get in this year: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas and Craig Biggio. I have read multiple opinions that only Maddux would get that phone call.

But Jaffe’s article isn’t solely about his prediction. Far from it. He details how he goes about the task of predicting the final outcome.

Take 5-10 minutes to read his detailed piece. Need be, read it again. It’s well worth your time.