COMMENTARY: MLB Hall of Fame Snubs
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Austin Darrow
The MLB Hall of Fame inductees have been announced and Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez made it.
Unless you’re Jose Canseco, who questioned Bagwell entering the Hall of Fame via Twitter, you’d probably agree these three are deserving of their inductions.
How Pudge Rodriguez only received 76% and Vladimir Guerrero didn’t get inducted is mind blowing. I truly believed Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds would get in.
Bagwell was suspected of steroid use during his playing days. Steroids have nothing to do with the HoF voting anymore.
The problem with the voting is the people who vote to put these guys in have never played the game. They are all writers who only see the inside of clubhouses when theyre admitted.
The Hall of Fame committee, the people who are in charge of who goes in to the Hall of Fame have never played and don’t know what it’s like in an MLB clubhouse.
The writers won’t admit it, but they left Curt Schilling off the ballot because of his tweets and backing of President-Elect Donald Trump. So you have journalists being petty because of Schillings political views and giving him less votes than he received last year.
Mike Mussina, an underrated pitcher, received more votes than Schilling. Mussina never won more than 20 games in a season and has a worse career ERA than Schilling.
Schilling is also in the 3,000 strike out club. Schilling’s stats are better than Mussina’s, yet the Moose gets more votes.
Bonds and Clemens were arguably the best to play at their positions. Bonds has the HR record and Clemens has won seven Cy Young awards.
They were both involved with steroids, but that’s what the upcoming classes played through. The writers have to let them in.
With the new writers coming in and the older voters going away, I can see more forgiveness being given to the steroid era players. Rodriguez and Bagwell are starters for the trend.
Guerrero to not be admitted is laughable. He hit under .300 twice in his career and had eight 30+ HR seasons. Also a nine time All-Star with an MVP and several silver sluggers.
Trevor Hoffman missed the votes by one percent. How can you leave probably the second best closer off the list?
As a closer, he finished second in Cy Young voting twice. His name was also mentioned in MVP ballots.
It just doesn’t make sense to leave those guys off the list. Don’t get me wrong, the three who were inducted were deserving, but the guys who were snubbed should’ve been on more ballots.
Next year Chipper Jones and Jim Thome join the ballots. Whose spot will they take?
The voting has to change. They have to get people in there who have seen the other side of the locker room.