This is one of my favorite days of the off-season.
I think the following three players are locks:
Ichiro Suzuki
C.C.
Sabthia
Billy Wagner
Ichiro and Sabthia are both new players on the ballot.
Ichiro has 3,089 hits…and that’s just in the MLB.
Counting Japan, it’s over 4,000.
He’s also one of the best defensive outfielders this century.
I’ve spent too many words on this.
The only question is if it’s unanimous.
But you know that a couple of asshole voters will fuck that up.
251 career wins is not easy to do in this era of baseball.
He’s also 18th all-time in strikeouts.
The only question is if he gets a Cleveland or Yankees hat on his plaque.
I think he goes Yankee.
He has more wins with the Yankees and won a World Series there.
Wagner is a different case entirely.
He’s on the ballot for the very last time and came painfully close last year.
You need 75% of the vote to get in and he had 73.6%.
His growth among ballots has been wild to watch.
His second year on the ballot, he only had 10.3%.
He’d have my vote as well.
The rest of the ballot is a lot more questionable.
I thinkAndruw JonesandCarlos Beltranboth should and will be in Cooperstown one day.
Felix Hernandez, Dustin PedroiaandChase Utleyjust fall short.
For various reasons, they just didn’t play long enough.
If Pedroia had never gotten hurt, I think he has a career like Barry Larkin and gets in.
But Larkin played 650 more games than Pedroia.
King Felix is a different story.
He’s the one that could surprise me.
Maybe voters ignore a lot of his compiling stats and focus on his dominant stats.
He’s the anti-Andy Pettitte in a way.
That will hopefully give us more time to consider him.
I could certainly be swayed myself.
When it comes to Hall Of Fame voting,Alex Rodriguez, Manny RamirezandAndy Pettitteare the Steroid Guys.
I use Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens as the benchmark here.
Bonds and Clemens both had Hall of Fame careers BEFORE using steroids and still didn’t crack 67%.
If those guys couldn’t get that close, these guys won’t get there.
A-Rod hasn’t even cracked 36%.
The rest of the list has a bunch of guys that had truly fantastic careers.
Bobby Abreu, Curtis Grandson and David Wright are three of my all-time favorite players.
But, I’m not going to fool myself into thinking they have any sort of chance.
It’s more likely that they fall off the ballot entirely.
We’ll all hear the results Tuesday January 21st at 6 PM.
It’s one of the best days of the year.
