The Good Phight’s Hall of Fame voting results

Hall of Fame voting is often contentious. People love to mock those writers online whose ballot they do not agree with. Only able to keep their opinions to 280 characters or less, it’s rare that you see a person write at length about why a ballot is bad. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what we as a fanbase think since we aren’t the ones voting. Besides, if it were to be left to the fans, you’d probably have an irrational amount of love for players like David Eckstein.

Here at The Good Phight, we gave you the opportunity to voice your opinion. Given the exact same ballot as the BBWAA writers, you were tasked with voting for players you thought were worthy of Cooperstown enshrinement. After 252 votes, the results are in and here they are:

Big Papi, come on down.

Seeing as how Edgar Martinez has now broken through as a mostly DH-only player to receive a plaque among the game’s greats, at least according to you, David Ortiz should receive the same acknowledgment. To me, the DH is a spot in the lineup now, synonymous with the game as it stands today. Whether you like it or not, it is a position, so it counts as something a player in today’s game can do. Ortiz is one of the best to ever perform at that position, posting numbers there that would have made him automatic had he posted the same numbers at any other position. Do we discount that to the fact that he only had to hit? That feels more like a personal preference, but for me, Ortiz is an easy call for the Hall.

A few other observations:

• As far as the “steroid guys”, this feels like what the final, real result will be - Barry Bonds getting close enough, but not quite close enough to finally receive the call. Roger Clemens seems to be more vilified among the readers, so he receives fewer votes. Alex Rodriguez will eventually get in, but his being a first-ballot inductee feels far fetched at the moment.
• The Jimmy Rollins homerism is real in these results. While I will argue that he is a borderline case, he’s exactly that: borderline. His falling a vote or two short is, in reality, not what will happen.
• Jeff Kent should get more votes. His is a criminally underrated Hall of Fame case and I hope he gets his due soon.
• Ditto Todd Helton.

All in all, a worthy exercise during this down time in baseball. Thank you to all who voted.