2015 Hall of Fame "Suspense"

There's a lot of talk about the suspense surrounding tomorrow's announcement as to who will get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this Summer. Unfortunately, I'm not really on the edge of my seat on the matter. Due the the great work of Ryan Thibbs and Darren Viola, we have an excellent idea of how the votes will shake out. In fact, this year, I feel that there's more suspense with who will fall off the HOF ballot than who gets inducted.

Pedro is an Inner Circle HOF'er

Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and John Smoltz will get in. Craig Biggio is a "probably", and Mike Piazza is a "probably not". That's it. No-one else is getting in through the BBWAA ballot this year. With the overstuffed ballot and an archaically arbitrary limit of 10 votes per ballot, many players who deserve to stay on the ballot will receive less than 5% of the vote, and not make it into the consideration set next year.

The cases for Gary Sheffield, Nomar Garciaparra, and Carlos Delgado weigh particularly heavily on my mind. I'm not saying these players are or aren't Hall of Famers, but they were definitely good enough to deserve a few years on the ballot to have their cases considered. Heck, in my hypothetical ballot this year, I would vote for Larry Walker, and he is also in danger of getting eliminated. These great players stand too good a chance of being abandoned and forsaken. My hopes for who will or won't get in don't actually have much to do with the individual players. If Biggio or Piazza don't get in this year, they will in another year or two. However, if they get in this year, it lessens the bottleneck of great players and would allow more voters to fit deserving players like Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell on their ballots next Winter. Still, the greater suspense right now seems to sit with the marvelous players who are getting almost ignored. If a great player gets knocked off this ballot, he'll likely have to wait decades to be considered by a veterans committee. Those committees, often made of living Hall of Famers, have traditionally been too busy keeping their private club as exclusive as possible, granting little hope for the living.