Getty Images Sport | Mitchell Layton
With a solid first-year showing, Trevor Hoffman will almost certainly be the next former Brewer elected to the Hall of Fame.
This past Wednesday, the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced that Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza would be this year’s inductees. Congrats to them both.
Last week, I talked about the chances of the four former Brewers on the ballot and, with the results now in, I thought I’d very briefly recap the vote.
As I predicted, two-year Brewers catcher Jason Kendall got a couple of throw-away votes but fell far short of the 5% required to stay on the ballot. Jim Edmonds got 11 votes, half of what he needed to remain active and far less than I thought he might get. Edmonds seems to have fallen victim to the ten-vote limit, as voters who might have thought his candidacy deserved consideration simply did not have enough room on their ballots to include a borderline player. Gary Sheffield’s percentage remained virtually the same from last year, but his vote total fell by one-sixth.
The Hall instituted a new rule for this year that requires voters to have actively covered the game within the past ten years, which purged a number of older voters (mostly retired sportswriters) from the rolls. The loss of this older class of voters gave a small bump to some of “steroid” candidates – Bonds and Clemens in particular – but that did not extend to Sheffield. I suspect he’ll linger for a few more years, but has already hit his peak.
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The real surprise to me was the smashing debut of Trevor Hoffman, who registered just over 67% of the vote. A total that high virtually assures that Hoffman will be elected in the next year or two. I think he has a very good shot in 2017, when the new class has no clear first-year inductees.
The two best statistically are Ivan Rodriguez (who will be hurt by whispers of steroid use ala Mike Pizza) and Manny Ramirez (who failed at least two drug tests). Vladimir Guerrero will also be on the ballot but, despite being the only player as fun to watch in the 1990s as Griffey, will probably be hurt by his lack any milestone career totals. I think the 2017 voters will pass over Pudge and Vlad, but elect Hoffman with Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines (finally!).
Check back next week for a full-length Brew Crew Confidential as we take a look as long-lost Brewers-White Sox beef!
