The Five Different Types of Hall of Fame Ballots

The Almost All-WAR Ballots

There were 13 voters who picked nine of the top 10 players according to WAR but left off one player. Eight of these 13 voters left off Larry Walker in favor of another player. The most common replacement for Walker was Vladimir Guerrero, who was chosen by five of the eight to replace Walker. The other choices were Sammy Sosa, Trevor Hoffman, and Fred McGriff.

It’s interesting that Walker is the main guy being left off the ballot. Of these players, he’s sixth in bWAR, and seventh in fWAR, ahead of Manny Ramirez, Tim Raines, and Edgar Martinez in both versions. Walker likely suffers from the Coors Field effect. He played nine-plus seasons with the Rockies and put up crazy numbers in Coors Field during his career.

If you took Walker’s Coors Field numbers and pro-rated them to a 150-game season, you get: .381/.462/.710, 139 R, 205 H, 39 HR, 131 RBI, 19 SB. That’s just insane. Apparently, Coors Field had enough of an effect on these eight voters that they dropped Walker off the ballot in favor of players who were lower than him in WAR, including Manny Ramirez, who twice tested positive for PEDs

Another version of the Almost All-WAR ballot in which only one player was different is the All-WAR ballot without Manny Ramirez. There were five such ballots. Three of the five voters chose Vladimir Guerrero over Manny Ramirez and the other two chose Trevor Hoffman over Manny.

Of course, Manny Ramirez twice tested positive for PEDs. These All-WAR voters didn’t mind voting for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, but chose not to vote for Manny. I think many people are willing to make that divide between players who tested positive once testing began in 2005 (like Manny Ramirez) and those who are suspected to have used before testing (like Bonds and Clemens).