MLB: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens HOF prospects

Analyzing the prospects for the Hall of Fame candidacies of former MLB players Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to make gains when results come on Tuesday.

In the final days before Tuesday’s announcement of the results of voting for the 2020’s MLB Hall of Fame (HOF) class, the math doesn’t look good for advocates of the enshrinement of Barry Bonds and/or Roger Clemens.

As of Friday evening, the two most prominent figures in the steroid scandal continued to hang just below the 75 percent threshold needed for election. Bonds had 119 backers among the 162 who had made public their preferences, Clemens had 118. That rounds to 73 percent for Bonds and 72 percent for Clemens.

That’s based on data reported by Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame Tracker website.

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For each, however, the problem is what history teaches us about voting patterns. Over the past several HOF elections, the clearest trend has been that voters who release their HOF ballots in advance overwhelmingly favor of the former MLB players. It is as if they are making ballots public precisely and purposefully to create momentum to influence those who yet to vote to their side.

At the same time, voters who choose to wait until after the results are announced to make their ballots public, or who do not make them public, turn out not nearly as disposed to support the candidacies of the two scandal-marred players.

The math from the 2019 election is telling. In that vote, 229 ballots were cast publicly in advance of the announcement of results. Bonds got 71 percent and Clemens got 69 percent of those ballots.

But another 101 voters did not make their ballots public in advance of the announcement of results. Only 44 percent of those voters supported Bonds and Clemens.

As a result, both men finished with around 62 percent of the vote.

Worse, for them and their supporters, opinions appear to be hard-wired in. Of the 148 voters from 2019 who have declared early in 2020, not one changed his or her mind about Bonds and only three did so regarding Clemens, the net impact on Clemens’ candidacy being a one-vote loss.

That means the only path for either to advance their vote totals lies with new voters. Thirteen voters who did not take part in 2019 have made their choices public so far in 2020, 10 supporting Bonds and Clemens. If that sounds like a Bonds-Clemens groundswell movement among new voters, keep in mind three things:

1. New voters represent just eight percent of the announced electorate to date.
2. Those voting in advance tends to be overwhelmingly more supportive of Bonds and Clemens than those who wait.
3. Only 77 percent of even the announced new voters supported Bonds and Clemens.

In assessing the Bonds-Clemens situation, we need to be mindful of what we don’t know and cannot know. Most meaningfully, we cannot know how many voters who have left the pair off their HOF ballots in previous years do not plan to vote in 2020 or have had their names stricken from the eligibility roles.

If a significant percentage of previous Bonds-Clemens opponents do not vote, that could help their percentage.

Absent movement on that front, though, the bottom line math is that there is no reason to expect either Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to rise from their 2019 backing more than at most a percentage point or two Tuesday.