FanSided Reveals Mock Hall of Fame Vote

The Baseball Writers Association of America will announce the results of the annual Hall of Fame election at 2 pm Eastern on Wednesday, but we at FanSided decided to cast our own internal ballots to see which players our writers think should be included in the Class of 2013.

The same standard that applies to the BBWAA was used by the writers of FanSided, with 75 percent of the vote needed to gain entrance into the Hall. Of course, the BBWAA has been more than a little hesitant to included internet-based writers into its membership, so we get no official vote, but if we did, our conglomerate put their heads together and determined that Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell would be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Falling just short of our election was Craig Biggio and Roger Clemens, each coming up two votes short, and Barry Bonds, who ended up three votes behind. Each writer was limited to ten players on their ballot, as is the case with the BBWAA election. FanSided, however, also asked its writers to submit a second ballot without the restrictions placed upon them. In that election, Biggio and Clemens earned enough votes to get in, as did Tim Raines. Interestingly, Bonds still came up short in this scenario.

Though he may be the only player inducted (if any are at all) when the BBWAA results are announced on Wednesday, Jack Morris managed only 30.4 percent of the FanSided vote. That number climbed top just over 40 percent when the 10-player limit was removed.

Complete results can be found at Wahoo’s on First, where Lewie Pollis published the results.

I can certainly understand the hesitancy to include Bonds and Clemens if the idea of steroids is something you feel is an affront to the game. There is a vocal segment of the fanbase who detest anyone who has been implicated in the use of PEDs and those people would probably never support either Clemens or Bonds for enshrinement. That said, I do wonder who the writers are that voted for Clemens but not Bonds. Clemens was arguably the greatest starting pitcher of his generation and at worst he was second behind Greg Maddux. Bonds really had no peer as a hitter unless you consider Ken Griffey Jr. and merely forgive the years lost to injury.

My point is that if you think Clemens is a Hall of Famer, you’d better think Bonds was as well. To do otherwise is allowing a personal dislike for the guy to cloud your judgement and bias your thinking.

If that’s the way that new media writers are going to vote, then perhaps it’s best the BBWAA doesn’t allow most of us as members.

For the sake of transparency, my ballot included Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Piazza, Morris, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Raines, and Bagwell.