2024 Hall of Fame Season, Part 7

My Personal Ballot

If you’ve been reading the whole series, and particularly if you read last year’s version of this long, long Hall of Fame exercise, you likely have figured out who I would vote for by now. There certainly shouldn’t be many surprises. But, before we get there, let’s quickly recap the last few editions of this odyssey, and then go over a few of my personal rules about Hall of Fame voting.

Here are links to all of this year’s Hall of Fame season editions:

• Part 1: The Ford C. Frick and BBWAA Career Excellence Awards (Note: It was announced yesterday that Tom Boswell is this year’s BBWAA Career Excellence Award recipient. I didn’t identify him as one of the top candidates, but he fits the description of one of the “line jumper” types I noted who suddenly win the award despite never having been a top vote-getter in the past. Boswell is a recent retiree, having hung up his pen and inkwell in the summer of 2021. Bruce Jenkins, who I did note was a likely winner, finished third in the voting, a slippage from the year before and likely not a great sign for him. Paul Hoynes finished second in a very close vote, which is a great sign for him next year.)

• Part 2: The Classic Baseball Era Committee Ballot

• Part 3: The Newcomers to the BBWAA Ballot Who Have No Case

• Part 4: The Newcomers Who Do Have A Case

• Part 5: The First Seven Returning Candidates

• Part 6: The Last Seven Returning Candidates

As for my personal rules about voting, they’re pretty simple. I vote for the players I think are qualified as long as they remain eligible. I don’t remove votes later on unless one of two things happens.

1. I simply don’t have space on the ballot because there are more qualified candidates.

2. They did something in the past year that made me change my vote.

I’ve never had a case where #2 applied, though I guess the Curt Schilling situation may have been one when he literally asked people not to vote for him. Not the other stuff he said or did, I’d have still voted for him despite that because I think he was a good enough player to warrant election. But if a player literally published a statement saying “Don’t vote for me. I want to put my trust in the Veterans Committee instead of with you jackals,” well, then, okay Curt, your wish is my command.

I wasn’t writing this newsletter when that happened, though, and I’m not an actual voting member of the BBWAA, so I didn’t have to deal with that. Because the ballot I do have as a member of the IBWAA, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, allows me twelve annual spots on my ballot instead of ten, I doubt I’ll ever have a case where situation #1 applies either, though that’s certainly possible.

Because I don’t pull votes from players after the fact, then everyone I voted for last year will still get my vote this year provided they are still on the ballot. Four of them are not, because three were elected (Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer) and one ran out of eligibility (Gary Sheffield). Since I voted for eleven players last year, that leaves seven I will continue to vote for this year, giving me five potential slots for newcomers, which just so happens to match the number of first-time eligible players I think have good cases that should at least be considered.

First, the returning vote-getters, in alphabetical order.