Contemporary Era HOF Ballot: No. 6, Roger Clemens and No. 5, Barry Bonds
We’re counting down from 8 to 1 on the Contemporary Hall of Fame ballot this week — this countdown is based not on my opinion of each player’s greatness but instead on that player’s chances of getting elected on Sunday. For example, I might think that Barry Bonds is the best player on this ballot — in fact, I do think that.
But do I think Barry Bonds has any chance at all of getting elected this year?
Well, we’ll find out today!
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Roger Clemens
Key achievements: Won 354 games and struck out 4,672 batters. He was the 1986 American League MVP and he won seven Cy Young Awards over his 24-year career.
Where he ranks on my eligible Hall of Fame list: No. 2.
Who are the players around him on the list: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Curt Schilling, Carlos Beltran.
WAR (Hall of Fame Conversation usually begins around 60 WAR, though there are players in the Hall of Fame with less than 50 WAR):
Baseball-Reference — 138.7
FanGraphs — 133.7
Hall of Fame history: Appeared on 10 BBWAA ballots, topping out at 65.2% in his final year. This is his first time on a veterans ballot.
Chances he will be elected this time around: 3%
Barry Bonds
Key achievements: All-time home run leader both for his career (762) and for a single season (73). Seven-time MVP, including four years in a row from 2001 to 2004. Eight-time Gold Glove winner. Only player to hit 400 home runs and steal 400 bases … but he actually hit 762 home runs and stole 514 bases.
Where he ranks on my eligible Hall of Fame list: No. 1.
Who are the players around him on the list: Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez.
WAR (Hall of Fame Conversation usually begins around 60 WAR, though there are players in the Hall of Fame with less than 50 WAR):
Baseball-Reference — 162.8
FanGraphs — 164.4
Hall of Fame history: Appeared on 10 BBWAA ballots, topping out at 66% in his final year. This is his first time on a veterans ballot.
Chances he will be elected this time around: 3%
There’s no point in talking again about how good Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds were; I think we all know they made a case as the best pitcher and best every-day player who ever lived. The question has always been what corners they cut to get there. We don’t know all the details because there were no mechanisms within the game at the time to find out. But we have strong reason to believe that they liberally and covertly used illegal performance-enhancing drugs even while the powers that be in and around baseball regrettably looked the other way.
All the arguments about them have been made over the last decade-plus. All of them. There is no place left to go, no breakthroughs left to have. I’d say 30-45% of people believe Bonds and Clemens should not be elected to the Hall of Fame because they cheated the game, cheated the fans and irrevocably sullied baseball history. And I’d say 55-70% of people believe, with different levels of enthusiasm, that they probably should be in the Hall of Fame because they were impossibly great players and the game was broken all around them and, surely, there have been multiple steroid users from their time already voted into the Hall of Fame.
Each side calls the other side naive.
This is what we call an impasse. It takes 75% to get a player elected to the Hall of Fame, and neither Bonds nor Clemens have 75% support, not in any group I’ve seen. Ironically, their best bet, in the long run, was probably the Baseball Writers Association of America. And, looking back, you can see that the Baseball Hall of Fame itself did a couple of sneaky things to prevent the BBWAA from voting in Bonds and Clemens.