The Five Different Types of Hall of Fame Ballots

The Five Different Types of Hall of Fame Ballots

While there are many different methods for voting for the Hall of Fame, these are the five major categories the ballots I came up with.

When it comes to Hall of Fame voting, everyone has an opinion. There are “big Hall” voters and “small Hall” voters. Some voters ignore PED use, while others refuse to vote for anyone associated with PED use, whether the player failed a test or is only a suspected user. Some vote using traditional metrics, others use more advanced analytic methods.

Times have changed for Hall of Fame voters. They had it much easier in the past. They would get the ballot in the mail, check the boxes of the players they thought were Hall of Fame caliber, and send it back. The winners would be announced and everyone would move on with their lives.

Today, in the age of the Internet and cable TV and social media, everyone has an opinion and an easy way to express it. Voters have been encouraged/pressured into revealing who they vote for and get considerable scorn if there are players on their ballots that others deem unworthy or if they chose not to vote for a popular candidate.

Also, for many years there were core statistics that everyone believed in as the best way to judge a player. Home runs, RBI, batting average, pitcher wins, and ERA were the main statistics a voter would use to judge whether a player belonged in the Hall of Fame. They would check to see how many batting titles or 20-win seasons a player had. How many all-star games was the player selected for? Did he ever win an MVP or Cy Young Award?

Now, there are many more statistics used to judge a player’s value and the numbers are easily accessible for everyone through multiple sites on the web. There’s also the issue of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), which has created a backlog of players who would normally already be voted in. The ballot has a 10-man limit, but some voters would choose even more than 10 players if they could. This makes sense because, compared to previous eras, the players over the last 20-plus years are underrepresented in the Hall of Fame.

Thanks to Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs on Twitter), we already know who roughly 50% of the Hall of Fame voters have selected. Thibodaux is tracking the Hall of Fame votes from those who make their ballots public or who submit their ballots to him anonymously. You can see how the votes are tracking if you follow him on Twitter.

I used Thibodaux’s spreadsheet to look at the ballots that have been cast so far and came up with five categories of voters. Some voters clearly use WAR as a guide, and this is shown by the players they’ve chosen, although they aren’t necessarily a slave to WAR in their voting. Others seem to use WAR as a guide, but draw the line with one or more players who either tested positive for PED use or have strong suspicions around them. There are also anti-WAR voters with ballots that lack any of the top five players by WAR. There is still a strong contingent of anti-PED voters. Finally, there are ballots that make you shake your head and think, ‘WTF?’