Lincoln Mitchell

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Tagged with: John Franco

A New Voting System for the Hall of Fame

Every few years the Hall of Fame seeks to address some of these issues, usually by adjusting the process for electing people outside of the annual ballot through changes to the veteran’s committee and the like. However, the method for voting on the players in the annual ballot has remained largely unchanged since the early days of the Hall of Fame. The requirement that a player must get 75% of the votes cast to win induction is something of an unusual voting system which differs from the BBWAA voting system for baseball awards, which is done through rank order voting and the fan’s vote for the All Star Game which is based on a simple plurality.

The 2011 Hall of Fame Ballot-The New Candidates

There are nineteen new players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot: Carlos Baerga, Jeff Bagwell, Brett Boone, Kevin Brown, John Franco, Juan Gonzalez, Marquis Grissom, Lenny Harris, Bobby Higginson, Charles Johnson, Al Leiter, Tino Martinez, Raul Mondesi, John Olerud, Rafael Palmeiro, Kirk Reuter, Benito Santiago, B.J. Surhoff and Larry Walker. There are no new candidates this year that can be expected to easily get elected. The closest to this is Jeff Bagwell, who is deserving of the Hall of Fame, but is not viewed as a sure thing. There are, however, several players on the ballot who, while being good players, in some cases for many years, are clearly not Hall of Famers. This group includes Baerga, Boone, Grissom, Harris, Higginson, Johnson, Leiter, Martinez, Mondesi, Reuter, Santiago and Surhoff. That leaves a diverse group of seven players including Bagwell, Brown, Franco, Gonzalez, Olerud, Palmeiro and Walker whose candidacies should at least be seriously considered.