Every January, the National Baseball Hall of Fame announces who will be inducted in the summer.
Since there’s a lot of talk about who may or may not get in, I’ll show y’all what I would do if I had a ballot (as a reminder, you can vote for UP TO 10 players).
Chipper Jones — Hall of Fame talent. I think he has the worst character on the ballot by far based on his past Tweets (let’s just say Chipper is more of an Alex than a Larry), but .303 lifetime hitter, 468 home runs, .930 OPS. That’s hard to refute.
Curt Schilling — Struck out over 3,000 batters. 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 19 career playoff starts. I don’t care what these politically biased judges say. Curt won a Roberto Clemente Award. Raised over $9 million for ALS during his playing days. That’s character. Hall of Famer.
Mike Mussina — Numbers are too similar to Schilling’s to not be inducted.
Barry Bonds — The greatest baseball player who ever lived. Anyone who disagrees is lying to themselves.
Roger Clemens –– Struck out over 4,000 batters. Yes.
Trevor Hoffman — Had the most saves of all-time before Mariano Rivera came in and stole his swagger. Both Hall of Famers in my opinion.
Jim Thome — There’s no proof he did PEDs and he hit 612 home runs in his MLB career. Sounds good to me.
Edgar Martinez –The DH award is named after him. He hit .312 with a .933 OPS in his MLB career. That’s more productive than Chipper Jones offensively.
Vladimir Guerrero — Fringe candidate, but he had a better career than *looks to make sure there’s no one older than 40 around* Jim Rice, who is in the Hall of Fame. Hit .318 with 449 home runs and a .931 OPS and was probably clean.
Larry Walker — I don’t care that he played for the Rockies.If you think that’s still such a huge advantage, go try to hit a 500-foot homerun with a wood bat off a 95 mph fastball in Denver and then get back to me. He won an MVP award, hit .313 with 383 home runs and a .965 OPS lifetime. Probably the best Canadian MLBer of all-time.
OK, out of votes.
So yeah, no Johnny Damon. No Manny Ramirez.
Damon didn’t have the career for it and my personal standard for PED users is that they have to be off the charts amazing. If I had 11 votes, then maybe. But I don’t.