The Next Cooperstown Class: The Official 2018 East Village Times HOF Vote

Want to start a hotly-contested debate without venturing into taboo topics like politics and religion? There might be no better place to start than the merits of potential inductees to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

By and large, the Hall houses the understandable standouts of the sport – names like Ruth, Gehrig, Mays, and Gwynn. That doesn’t mean, however, that the baseball public agrees about the inclusion of each and every inductee – Bill Mazeroski and his .299 lifetime on-base percentage would raise even more eyebrows if not for a single home run that won the 1960 World Series.

The merits of membership have become even more divisive of late, in an era where specialization, sabermetrics, and steroids have introduced intricacies to the voting process that didn’t exist in the early years of Cooperstown elections.

The solution, however, is a familiar one: put it to a vote. Don’t believe designated hitters or closers provided enough of a holistic contribution to warrant induction? Don’t vote for them. Think the Hall is meant to serve as a history of the sport, and leaving out standout members of the Steroid Era is counterintuitive to recording that history? Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa will happily join your ballot.

Tally the votes, and let democracy do the rest. If a player is named on 75 percent of the ballots or more, he’s in, simple as that.

With the actual Hall of Fame voting results being released tomorrow, the staff here at East Village Times decided to put together their own ballots. In total, EVT elected five new members to the Hall of Fame, all by comfortable margins. Getting there, however, involved some shouting of stats, a fair bit of finger-pointing, and a mile or two of steps down memory lane.

Enjoy.

The Results

First things first: the results themselves. As mentioned above, five players met the 75 percent threshold for membership – Jim Thome, Chipper Jones, Trevor Hoffman, Edgar Martinez, and Vlad Guerrero. Of those inducted five, four (Thome, Jones, Hoffman, and Guerrero) are widely expected to be inducted into the real Hall of Fame tomorrow, while Martinez is predicted to fall just short in 2018 and will likely join them next year.

Chipper Jones – 100%

Vlad Guerrero – 100%

Trevor Hoffman – 94.7%

Jim Thome – 89.5%

Edgar Martinez – 84.2%

Barry Bonds – 73.7%

Roger Clemens – 68.4%

Mike Mussina – 63.2%

Curt Schilling – 52.6%

Andruw Jones – 47.4%

Gary Sheffield – 31.6%

Fred McGriff – 26.3%

Jeff Kent – 21.1%

Omar Vizquel – 21.1%

Larry Walker – 21.1%

Scott Rolen – 15.8%

Sammy Sosa – 15.8%

Billy Wagner – 10.5%

Hideki Matsui – 5.3%

Johan Santana – 5.3%

Manny Ramirez – 5.3%

Those eligible for induction this year and not listed here, including Johnny Damon, Kerry Wood, and Jamie Moyer, were not named on any of the ballots submitted by EVT staff members.

More interesting than the results, however, were the discussions and rationalizations that followed them. Comprising the rest of this article, then, is a recap of some of the fiercest debates surrounding certain players and their Cooperstown resumes.

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Noah Hilton

Noah is a current undergraduate at the University of San Diego. In addition to his classes as a Business Economics student, Noah serves as the scouting director for the nationally-ranked USD baseball team and as an NFL correspondent with The Mighty 1090. You can follow him on Twitter @thebackseatlamp