This Is One Of The Worst Hall Of Fame Ballots I've Ever Seen

First of all, Scott has two T’s in it. That’s number one.

Second of all, I said on the last Starting 9 that I was done getting worked up over Hall of Fame voting, that it was a thing of the past, and that I just wasn’t as passionate about it as I used to be. I guess I just hadn’t seen a really shitty ballot in a while. Not like a questionable ballot. I mean, like a horrendously terrible ballot that would compel me to write a blog about it that included bullet points on several egregious fuck-ups.

I actually had people in my mentions crying about how “this is why ballots shouldn’t be public” because meanies like Jared will call out the writers who submit them. Getttt the fuckkkk out of here. It’s your fucking job, dude. If I do something stupid while I’m on the job, the comment section, Reddit, Twitter, the whole deal is coming for my throat. And I LOVE that pressure. It makes me want to do the best job I can possibly do every single day to avoid getting castrated by the masses for doing a bad job.

Okay, so let’s get into this atrocity of a Hall of Fame ballot. How are you going to vote for Gary Sheffield, but not Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens? In Scot’s own words:

Scot, I’ve got some bad news for ya — Gary Sheffield is an admitted steroid user. He said it on the record.

New York Yankees outfielder Gary Sheffield admitted using a testosterone-based steroid supplied by BALCO after being introduced to the Burlingame-based lab by Barry Bonds. In this week’s edition of Sports Illustrated, Sheffield said he applied a steroid known as “the cream” on his surgically scarred right leg to heal wounds, though he insisted he didn’t know it was a steroid. Sheffield said he used the drug before and during the 2002 season.

I love Sheff. That was my backyard wiffleball stance for my entire childhood. But the man was on the sauce. And trust me, I’m not one of those, “Well, if they cheated then they’re not getting in” guys. I’m a case-by-case guy. However, if your stance is that you won’t vote for a player who “did it wrong” and then you vote for a guy who admittedly used steroids, then what the hell are we doing here?

Next, we’ve got Curt Schilling being left off the ballot. Listen, I get it. Uncle Curt has said some dumb shit on Twitter over the years. Like, some really, really DUMB shit. But invoking the character clause to keep a clear cut Hall of Famer out of Cooperstown for anything less than a serious crime is insane to me. I’ve written about it countless times, so I’m not going to do this huge breakdown of numbers but the man is a Hall of Famer. It’s really not even a debate. And if we were to do character background checks on every single person who went into the Baseball Hall of Fame, then the list of inductees would be noticeably smaller than it is today. They’re not saints. They’re athletes. And a lot of them have questionable character.

Scot covers the White Sox. You wanna know how I know that? It’s not because I checked his Twitter bio; it’s because he voted for Paul Konerko for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Not the White Sox Hall of Fame, which he’s every bit deserving of. The baseball one. Where all of the all-time great baseball players end up. No doubt, Konerko belongs in the Hall of Pretty Damn Good. But when the average WAR of a Hall of Fame position player is 69.0, and Konerko’s career WAR is 27.7, then we have a problem.

The other guys he voted for, I can’t get too worked up about. Andruw Jones’ Hall of Fame case, I’ve written about before and determined it was close but a no from me. Larry Walker gets a yes from me, Scott Rolen deserves a lot more support than what he gets and I wouldn’t mind if he got in, Jeff Kent is a no, Omar Vizquel is a no but one of the greatest gloves of all-time, Todd Helton is a no, and we can circle back to Gary Sheffield also being a no but I could probably be talked into it.

So, what we’ve got here is simply one of the worst Hall of Fame ballots I’ve ever seen, littered with brutal omissions, hypocritical inclusions, and blatant homerism. The only thing this ballot is missing is a vote for Chone Figgins. Hey, he got Derek Jeter right, though!

Clean it up, BBWAA. Clean it up.