I first joined the Baseball Writers' Association of America 10 years ago, after a year of waiting, because the organization's board at the time declined my application on spurious grounds. But even then, I looked forward eagerly to this day, when my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot would become an official one. The eagerness faded, as time rocked me to patience, but about a year ago, when the ballot became imminent, I began thinking in earnest about how I would eventually vote -- and about my long-standing promise to readers that I would reveal and explain my selections.
The logjam of qualified candidates, exacerbated by moralizing voters who are trying to keep the greatest hitter and pitcher of the last 30 years out of the Hall of Fame, meant that I had to choose a subset of names to keep my ballot within the limit of 10. Had the limit not existed, I would have voted for at least 13 players this year, possibly more. I started with the 13 I thought worthy, immediately checked off the seven no-doubters, and then worked my way through the remainder to add one, then another, and then, after two weeks with a ballot that had nine names marked but not the one that would make the ballot final, gave in and selected the 10th name -- leaving, with regrets, a few good men off of my list.
Here, in the order in which I checked them off, are the 10 names I selected for my first Hall of Fame ballot, with some explanations.
• Barry Bonds: I have seen the greatest players of my generation destroyed by sanctimony. We can put in inferior players because their friends are on the various veterans committees. We can put in Bud Selig, who oversaw a work stoppage that nearly killed the industry, then happily looked the other way while performance-enhancing drugs appeared in the game and owners counted their money. We can certainly put in Bonds, who hit more home runs and drew more walks than any other player in history, who retired with the fourth-highest OBP and fifth-highest slugging percentage in history, who won seven MVP awards (and deserved at least two more), who utterly defined the game, for better and perhaps for a bit worse, for a decade. You simply cannot tell the story of Major League Baseball from 1990 to 2010 without discussing the exploits of Barry Bonds. His exclusion to this point is pearl-clutching of the highest order.
• Roger Clemens: Much of what I said about Bonds applies to Clemens as well. By wins above replacement, he's behind only Cy Young, who benefits from 11 seasons before the modern era of baseball to boost his numbers, and Walter Johnson, the most dominant pitcher of the first 80 years of that same modern era. Clemens ranks third all time in strikeouts, took home seven Cy Young Awards and led his league in ERA and pitcher WAR seven times (not the same seven seasons, but I guess we'll take it). He pitched extremely well, and he pitched a lot, just shy of 5,000 innings, putting him in the top 10 in the post-World War II era. He's almost as essential to the story of baseball in the past quarter-century as Bonds.
• Edgar Martinez. I was voting for Edgar before the Today's Game Committee brought humiliation on both the Hall and the unfortunate Harold Baines -- voting him in as perhaps the worst position player selected in the past 40 years -- but Baines' inclusion makes Edgar's exclusion through nine ballots even more inexplicable. Martinez racked up nearly 70 WAR despite contributing nothing on defense and, as a lifetime DH, having to produce even more to get so far above the replacement level for that position. He was exceptional at getting on base, finishing 17th all time with a .418 career OBP. His career would have been more impressive had Seattle not held him in the minors so long, refusing to give him regular playing time until he turned 27 -- unthinkable today, since he destroyed Triple-A even at age 24, but it was a more ignorant time. If you think David Ortiz is a Hall of Famer, then Edgar is too.
• Mike Mussina. Moose's 83 WAR is the highest of any pitcher not in the Hall other than Clemens, and Mussina doesn't have the same baggage associated with his candidacy. He pitched extremely well in every year but one of an 18-year career, and did so while pitching entirely in the AL East during a period when that was by far the game's toughest division, something that isn't reflected even in most advanced metrics. Among pitchers in the modern era with at least 3,000 innings, Mussina's ERA+ of 123 (100 is league average) ranks 21st. Everyone ahead of him is in the Hall, on the ballot or was banned from the game (Eddie Cicotte).
• Mariano Rivera. The only pure reliever in MLB history who, in my opinion, belongs in the Hall of Fame. His Baseball-Reference WAR total of 56, which includes a boost for pitching in high-leverage situations, puts him close to the bar for Hall of Fame starters, even though he threw just 1,283⅔ innings. His ERA+ of 203 is the highest ever; his adjusted pitching runs, which estimates runs prevented above an average pitcher in the same workload, ranks 22nd all time, and everyone above or right below him was a starting pitcher. By comparison, Trevor Hoffman, voted in last year by the BBWAA, ranks 129th in adjusted pitching runs, and Bruce Sutter ranks 214th. That's without even discussing Rivera's postseason performance, encompassing 141 innings with a 0.70 ERA, which is a major reason why you can't discuss baseball of this period without including Rivera.
• Scott Rolen. Rolen's case for the Hall rests in large part on two things historically undervalued by voters: on-base percentage and defense. Rolen is a top-five defensive third baseman from the postwar era -- evaluating defense from before then is largely based on hearsay -- and his career OBP ranks 17th among third basemen with at least 1,000 games played, 750 or more at the position. Only five third basemen have 2,000 games played and an OBP higher than Rolen's; four are in the Hall (Wade Boggs, Chipper Jones, Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews) and the fifth, Eddie Yost, didn't do anything else particularly well.
• Larry Walker. Walker racked up 72.7 WAR despite on and off injuries that shortened his career, limiting him to 1,988 career games, and that figure reflects an adjustment for the time he spent playing with the Rockies in their hitter-friendly home parks. Walker, like Rolen, was a very good defensive player who got on base at a high clip, but he did hit for power, finishing 12th all time in slugging percentage (unadjusted for park), 66th in homers and also 45th in OBP.
• Roy Halladay. After those first seven, Doc was the next name I added after some internal debate, because he had a clear Hall of Fame peak, though his career was short -- just 2,749 innings as a starter, only eight seasons in which he qualified for the ERA title. I did not want his tragic death at age 40 to sway my thinking, nor did I want to allow the fact that I met Halladay and watched him pitch many times while I worked for the Blue Jays to lead me to favor him for the wrong reasons. His 64.3 WAR is on the border of Hall-worthy, but most of his time in the majors came pitching for Toronto in that same difficult AL East that I discussed in the Mussina comment. Halladay made 39 starts against the Red Sox and 36 against the Yankees, more than he faced any other opponents, at a time when those two teams had two of the best offenses in baseball. Doc won two Cy Young Awards, probably should have won a third in 2011, and led his league's pitchers in WAR four times, along with seven top-10 finishes in ERA. His tremendous peak and his production given the caliber of lineups he faced most of his career pushed him over the line for me.
• Andruw Jones. Like Halladay, Jones had a 10-year run of Hall of Fame-level production, and then when he was done, he was just done. In Jones' case, that was at age 30, due to a combination of knee trouble and weight gain that cost him speed, defense and power. He is still the best defensive center fielder of my lifetime, and his name remains the gold standard when scouting other center fielders and trying to evoke an image of a player who, when you look up at a ball in the air and then look down to see the fielder, is already there waiting to catch it. Jones' career WAR of 62.8, which is heavily boosted by defensive production, is probably a shade below the bar, but what boosted him for me was something else: Without Andruw Jones becoming a star in the 1990s, we don't have Xander Bogaerts, Andrelton Simmons, Kenley Jansen, Jurickson Profar, Didi Gregorius, Jonathan Schoop and all of the other players and prospects who've come out of Curaçao and Aruba since then. Jones made baseball more popular there and made young players want to play baseball. MLB can market the game globally and hold games in London or Tokyo, but nothing grows the game like a hometown kid becoming a star on everyone's TV.
• Gary Sheffield. My last spot came down primarily to three names: Sheffield, Manny Ramirez and Todd Helton. Ramirez had the highest pure WAR total, but unlike every player on my ballot, actually tested positive twice, once for a masking agent and once for testosterone. I would consider voting in a player with one or more failed PED tests, but also view that as a clear criterion we can use (as opposed to the hearsay used to indict other players, such as Bonds or Clemens, neither of whom ever tested positive for anything) to separate players on the ballot. Sheffield was a far better hitter than Helton and was one of the worst defensive players in history by any available metric, grading out poorly wherever he played. Had he spent more time at DH, would he have sailed into the Hall? If a player's bat is clearly Hall-worthy -- Sheffield is tied for 25th all time in adjusted batting runs -- should he go into the Hall regardless of his defensive ineptitude? This is where Hall voting differs, for me, from MVP voting. The latter is clear; we want the player who produced the most value for his team. With the Hall of Fame, the criteria are a bit more ambiguous, and I believe the Hall should include the best players, even those who were elite in one significant way but flawed in a smaller one. This is also the one slot where I considered the players' tenures on the ballot. Helton is in his first year, and there's a good (but not guaranteed) chance I'll get to consider him many more times, while Sheffield is halfway into his 10 years and has barely floated above the 5 percent cutoff that might take him off the ballot.
One other note on a player who did not make my ballot: Fred McGriff is in his 10th and thus final year of eligibility, with zero chance to get in after polling just 23.2 percent last year. McGriff is the classic "Hall of the Very Good" player, coming in at 52.6 WAR, an above-average player for most his career but never a star, with just a single top-five WAR finish in any season. I do expect him to sail through whatever they're calling the relevant Hall committee when his time comes, and that's fine, but I could not justify putting him on my ballot ahead of any of the 11 names (including Helton) I cited above.